The Justice Department’s Brian Benczkowski answers Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)‘s request for clarification of the terms “humane treatment” and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” as it applies to suspected terrorists in US custody. Benczkowski writes that the government uses the Military Commissions Act (MCA) (see October 17, 2006) and a recent executive order, Order #13440 (authorizing the continued use of harsh interrogation methods—see July 20, 2007) to determine how the US will comply with the Geneva Conventions. Benczkowski writes that Order 13440 and the Army Field Manual, among other guidelines, ensure that any interrogations carried out by US personnel comply with Geneva. Geneva Does Not Clearly Define 'Humane Treatment' - He goes on to note that the term “humane treatment” is not directly defined by Geneva, but “rather provides content by enumerating the specific prohibitions that would contravene that standard.” Common Article 3, the statute in the Conventions that specifically addresses the treatment of prisoners, expressly prohibits “violence” including “murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.” It also prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity,” including “humiliating and degrading treatment.” Benczkowski writes that there is no accepted international standard as to what is defined as “humane treatment” and what is not, outside of the basic provisions of food, water, clothing, shelter, and protection from extremes of temperature. Given this standard, he writes, the Bush administration does ensure that “all detainees within the CIA program shall be treated humanely.” Defined by Circumstances - He goes on to note that Geneva seems to grant some leeway for interpretation as to what complies with its standards, particularly in the area of “outrages upon personal dignity.” Citing a previous international tribunal, he writes, “To rise to the level of an outrage, the conduct must be ‘animated by contempt for the human dignity of another person’ and it must be so deplorable that the reasonable observer would recognize it as something that must be universally condemned.” None of the methods used by US interrogators contravenes any of these standards as the Justice Department interprets them, Benczkowski concludes. As for the question of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” or as he abbreviates it, “CIDT,” Benczkowski writes that such treatment is prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. However, circumstances determine what is and is not CIDT, he writes; even “in evaluating whether a homicide violates Common Article 3, it would be necessary to consider the circumstances surrounding the act.” The CIA interrogation program fully complies with Common Article 3, various statutes and Supreme Court decisions, and the Bill of Rights, Benczkowski asserts. [US Department of Justice, 9/27/2007 ]

The New York Times reveals that the Justice Department issued two secret rulings authorizing far more extensive use of torture and abuse during the interrogation of terror suspects than has previously been acknowledged by the White House (see February 2005 and Late 2005). The White House’s deputy press secretary, Tony Fratto, makes the same counterclaim that Bush officials have made for years, saying, “We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within US law” and international agreements. But that claim is countered by the statements of over two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism. When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned in September after accusations of misleading Congress and the public on a wide array of issues, he said in his farewell speech that the Justice Department is a “place of inspiration” that had balanced the necessary flexibility to pursue the administration’s war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law and respect civil liberties (see July 25, 2007). But many of Gonzales’s associates at the Justice Department now say that Gonzales was usually compliant with the wishes of Vice President Cheney and Cheney’s chief counsel and adviser, David Addington, to endorse whatever interrogation policies the White House wished in the name of protecting the nation, no matter what conflicts may arise with US and international law or whatever criticisms from other governments, Congressional Democrats, or human rights groups may ensue. Critics, including many of the officials now speaking out, say that Gonzales turned the Justice Department from the independent law enforcement arm of the US government into just another arm of the White House. [New York Times, 10/4/2007]

The White House denies reports that a secret Justice Department opinion in 2005 authorized the use of torture against detainees suspected of terrorist connections, or superseded US anti-torture laws (see February 2005). Press secretary Dana Perino tells reporters: “This country does not torture. It is a policy of the United States that we do not torture and we do not.” The existence of the 2005 memo, signed by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was revealed by the New York Times. It apparently superseded a late 2004 memo that characterized torture as “abhorrent” and limited the use of “harsh interrogation techniques” (see December 30, 2004). Perino confirms the existence of the 2005 memo, but will not comment on what techniques it authorized. She merely says that the memo did not reinterpret the law. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says the 2004 opinion remains in effect and that “neither Attorney General Gonzales nor anyone else within the department modified or withdrew that opinion. Accordingly, any advice that the department would have provided in this area would rely upon, and be fully consistent with, the legal standards articulated in the December 2004 memorandum.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a consistent opponent of torture, says he was “personally assured by administration officials that at least one of the techniques allegedly used in the past, waterboarding, was prohibited under the new law.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls the 2005 memo and other Justice Department memos authorizing torture “cynical attempt[s] to shield interrogators from criminal liability and to perpetuate the administration’s unlawful interrogation practices.” House Democrats want Steven Bradbury, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), to “be made available for prompt committee hearings.” Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, says: “The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer—it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration’s approach.” Perino does not comment on another secret memo that apparently concluded all of the CIA’s torture methodologies were legal (see Late 2005). [Associated Press, 10/4/2007]

Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes assumes command of the military prosecutions at Guantanamo, a decision that infuriates lead prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis. Haynes is promoted by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England; Haynes, a civilian lawyer, was blocked in his bid for a seat on an appellate court because of his connection to the now-infamous torture memos (see November 27, 2002). Davis, who opposes the use of such techniques as waterboarding and other “extreme interrogation techniques,” resigns within hours of Haynes’s promotion. Davis will later say that Haynes’ expanded powers were a key reason for his decision (see October 4, 2007).
“[T]he decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor’s office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions,” he will write in a December 2007 op-ed explaining his decision (see December 10, 2007). Davis will also write that he has no confidence that military commissions can be used for fair trials if “political appointees like Haynes and [convening authority Susan] Crawford” are in charge: “The president first authorized military commissions in November 2001, more than six years ago, and the lack of progress is obvious. Only one war-crime case has been completed. It is time for the political appointees who created this quagmire to let go. Sen[ators] John McCain and Lindsey Graham have said that how we treat the enemy says more about us than it does about him. If we want these military commissions to say anything good about us, it’s time to take the politics out of military commissions, give the military control over the process and make the proceedings open and transparent.” [Los Angeles Times, 12/10/2007] In 2009, one of Davis’s subordinates, prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, will confirm Davis’s story (see January 18, 2009). He will recall Davis complaining of “being bullied by political appointees in the Bush administration.” Vandeveld will write that Davis resigned rather than bring prosecutions before they were ready to proceed, especially since, as Davis believed, the prosecutions were for political purposes. [Washington Post, 1/18/2009]

Air Force Colonel Morris Davis resigns his position as the lead counsel for the military commissions trials at Guantanamo after complaining that his authority in prosecutions is being usurped for political purposes (see October 19, 2007). In particular, Davis complains about interference by Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, a legal adviser at Guantanamo (see July 2007), and Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes (see October 4, 2007). [Washington Post, 10/20/2007] Davis planned on prosecuting as many as 80 of the Guantanamo detainees. There have been no trials so far, because the Supreme Court ruled the trials unconstitutional until they were reauthorized by the Military Commissions Act (see October 17, 2006). Davis has made headlines with outspoken support of the trials and his colorful characterizations of Guantanamo detainees. In March 2006, he compared detainees who challenged the trial system to vampires afraid of the harsh sunlight of US justice: “Remember if you dragged Dracula out into the sunlight, he melted? Well, that’s kind of the way it is trying to drag a detainee into the courtroom,” he told reporters. “But their day is coming.” [Miami Herald, 10/6/2007]

In light of new disclosures that the Justice Department endorsed torture in 2005 (see October 4, 2007), President Bush says the CIA broke no laws in its interrogations of prisoners, and reiterates his oft-stated assertion that the US “does not torture people.” In a brief appearance at the White House, Bush says, “We stick to US law and our international obligations.” But when the US finds a terrorism suspect: “You bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them—because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.” Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says in response: “The administration can’t have it both ways. I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.” Rockefeller is referring to attempts by the White House and its defenders to assert that Congress knew as much about the CIA’s torture policies as did the White House, and its simultaneous refusal to turn over to Congress Justice Department and other documents used in the Bush administration’s assertions of legality. [Los Angeles Times, 10/6/2007]

After almost five years in US custody, Mohammed Jawad (see December 17, 2002) is charged with attempted murder in violation of the law of war and intentionally causing serious bodily injury. Jawad is alleged to have thrown a hand grenade into a US military vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan, but denies the charges. [Human Rights First, 9/2008]

CIA Director Michael Hayden orders an unusual internal investigation of the agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the press will later learn. The OIG, led by Inspector General John Helgerson, has conducted aggressive investigations of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs (see May 7, 2004). Current and former government officials say that Hayden’s probe has created anxiety and anger in the OIG, and has sparked questions in Congress of possible conflicts of interest. The review is focusing on complaints that the OIG has not been, as the New York Times reports, a “fair and impartial judge of agency operations,” but instead has “begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.” Some current and former officials say that such a probe threatens to undermine the independence of the office. Former CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz, who served from 1990 through 1998, says any move by Hayden to conduct a probe into the OIG would “not be proper.” Hitz calls it “a terrible idea,” and adds: “Under the statute, the inspector general has the right to investigate the director. How can you do that and have the director turn around and investigate the IG?” A CIA spokesman says Hayden’s only motive is “to help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better.” The investigation is being overseen by Robert Deitz, a trusted aide to Hayden who served with him when he ran the National Security Agency. Another member of the investigating group is Associate Deputy Director Michael Morrell. Under the law, the proper procedure for Hayden would be to file complaints with the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all the inspectors general, or to go directly to the White House. For an internal inquiry to be launched against an agency’s OIG by the agency head violates the independence and the position of the OIG. Critics say that the timing of Hayden’s investigation is more than coincidental, as Helgerson’s office is readying a number of reports on CIA detention, interrogation, and rendition practices. [New York Times, 10/11/2007]

Former President Carter says the US government tortures prisoners in violation of international treaties that the US has agreed to comply with. He tells CNN: “I don’t think it. I know it.” He adds: “Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights. We’ve said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we’ve said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused.” Responding to claims that the US government does not torture, he says, “[Y]ou can make your own definition of human rights and say we don’t violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don’t violate them.” [CNN, 10/10/2007]

Dissent among CIA personnel, brewing for well over a year (see April 19, 2006), has become even more intense in recent months, according to reporter Ken Silverstein. Some CIA employees, increasingly disgusted with the Bush administration’s torture and rendition policies, have taken their complaints directly to Inspector General (IG) John Helgerson. In response, CIA Director Michael Hayden has launched an internal inquiry into Helgerson’s office (see Before October 11, 2007). Silverstein reports that on top of internal dissent and complaints to Helgerson’s office, a former senior legal official quit in protest over the administration’s torture policies. Silverstein is not at liberty to reveal the name of the official, but says he worked as a deputy inspector general under former IG Frederick Hitz, who left the position in 1998, and after that worked in the CIA’s office of general counsel. Silverstein says the official had the reputation of being a “hardliner” on terrorism and prisoner interrogations. According to Silverstein, “sources tell me he couldn’t stomach what he deemed to be abuses by the Bush administration and stepped down from his post.” [Harper's, 10/12/2007]

Abdallah Higazy, an Egyptian national who falsely confessed to owning a suspicious airline transceiver after the 9/11 attacks because the FBI threatened to have his family tortured (see December 17, 2001), December 27, 2001, and January 11-16, 2002), has his lawsuit against the FBI reinstated by a US appeals court. The majority opinion finds, “An officer in [FBI agent Michael] Templeton’s shoes would have understood that the confession he allegedly coerced from Higazy would have been used in a criminal case against Higazy and that his actions therefore violated Higazy’s Constitutional right to be free from compelled self-incrimination.” [New York Sun, 10/18/2007]Decision Issued and Withdrawn - Interestingly, the appeals court posts its full opinion on the case, then within minutes withdraws that opinion and issues another one, with an identical conclusion but with much of the details of Higazy’s allegations redacted. The new ruling reads: “This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.” But the initial opinion has already been downloaded by dozens of legal observers and bloggers, and the evidence redacted by the court is in the public view. "People Don't Do that Voluntarily" - Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen writes, “The fresh details about his interrogation in December 2001 illustrate how an innocent man can be persuaded to confess to a crime that he did not commit, and the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go in its terrorism-related investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks.” A Justice Department spokesman says that although it does not concede that Higazy’s allegations are true, it has agreed to proceed under the assumption that they are true in order to argue the case. The appellate court does not rule on the veracity of Higazy’s story, but instead concludes that Templeton lacks the “qualified immunity” that would shield him from a civil suit. Redacted Information - Appellate court clerk Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe says that the original Higazy ruling contained information that should have been sealed from the outset. The decision to seal the information was the court’s, she says, and not the Justice Department’s or the FBI. She says that the decision to seal the information about Templeton’s coercion, and Higazy’s fears of the Egyptian intelligence service, was made out of concern for the safety of Higazy and his family. “Prior to the world of the Internet, a decision would be issued and then withdrawn without any consequences of any moment,” Wolfe says. “Now if that happens it raises the specter of interference or some nefarious intent at work, which is not the case.” Appellate lawyer Stephen Bergstein says that the redacted information “was more embarrassing than worthy of secrecy.” He continues: “Had they left it in, a lot of people probably wouldn’t have noticed. With the Internet, nothing ever goes away.” [Howard Bashman, 10/18/2007; New York Times, 10/20/2007; Washington Post, 10/25/2007]

The former lead prosecutor for terrorism tribunals at Guantanamo, Colonel Morris Davis, tells reporters that senior officials at the Pentagon pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees before the November 2008 presidential elections, placing politics ahead of duty. Davis says that the pressure from the Pentagon played a part in his decision to resign (see October 4, 2007). Davis says senior Defense Department officials discussed the “strategic political value” of putting some prominent detainees on trial in a September 2006 meeting (see September 29, 2006). Davis also says he objected to newly appointed senior officials’ insistence on using classified evidence in closed sessions of court, and to the military commissions being put under Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes (see October 4, 2007). 'Less than Full, Fair and Open' - Davis had serious concerns about the use of classified evidence, due to worries it could be seen to be tainting trials. Davis says that since Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann’s arrival as legal adviser to the convening authority in the summer of 2007, Hartmann has attempted to speed up trials that will engage media attention and show the public that the process works (see July 2007). “He said, the way we were going to validate the system was by getting convictions and good sentences,” Davis says. “I felt I was being pressured to do something less than full, fair and open.” [Washington Post, 10/20/2007] Pentagon regulations require the legal adviser to be an impartial administration and not an arm of the prosecution. 'Political Commission' - Law professor Marc Falkoff, who represents some of the Guantanamo detainees, will observe that the interference Davis cites “is a patent violation of Rule 104 of the Manual for Military Commissions and Section 949b of the Military Commissions Act, both of which make it unlawful to ‘attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence… the exercise of professional judgment by trial counsel or defense counsel.’” Falkoff notes that in the Supreme Court’s Hamdan verdict (see June 30, 2006), Justice Anthony Kennedy specifically disapproved of the first military commissions because they lacked “the safeguards that are important to the fairness of the proceedings and the independence of the court.” Davis says, “[A]s things stand right now, I think it’s a disgrace to call it a military commission—it’s a political commission.” [Jurist, 11/2/2007]

Administration of Torture book cover. [Source: Public domain]American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh publish the book Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. In their book, Jaffer and Singh use over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to detail the sometimes-horrific conditions under which suspected terrorists are detained by the US government. The book spans detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The book’s central thesis is, according to the ACLU’s press release for the book, “that the torture and abuse of prisoners was systemic and resulted from decisions made by senior US officials, both military and civilian,” including President Bush himself. [American Civil Liberties Union, 10/22/2007] “[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes,” write Jaffer and Singh. Some of the prisoners “abused, tortured, and killed” were not even terror suspects, the authors show. [Raw Story, 10/22/2007] The book grew out of a long, difficult battle by the ACLU and several other such organizations to secure records pertaining to detainees held by the US in other countries (see October 7, 2003). The book shows a starkly different reality than the picture painted by the Bush administration’s repeated disavowals of torture, a reality established by the government’s own documentation. The administration has repeatedly claimed, for instance, that the torture and abuse so well documented at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison was an isolated, unusual set of incidents that was not repeated at other US detention facilities. The documentation compiled by Jaffer and Singh prove that claim to be a lie: “This claim was completely false, and senior officials almost certainly knew it to be so.” Beatings, kickings, and all manner of abuses have routinely occurred at other detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, the book states. Autopsy reports show that numerous prisoners in US custody have died due to strangulation, suffocation, or blunt-force trauma. Documents from Guantanamo, a facility where Bush officials have repeatedly claimed that the “excesses” of Abu Ghraib were never implemented, show that Guantanamo detainees were regularly “shackled in excruciating ‘stress positions,’ held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months.” And, perhaps most damningly for the administration, government documents show that top White House and Pentagon officials were not only well aware of the scope of the abuse months before the first pictures from Abu Ghraib were broadcast to the public, but that torture and abuse are part of the administration’s policy towards detainees. “[T]he maltreatment of prisoners resulted in large part from decisions made by senior officials, both military and civilian,” Jaffer and Singh write. “These decisions… were reaffirmed repeatedly, even in the face of complaints from law enforcement and military personnel that the policies were illegal and ineffective, and even after countless prisoners… were abused, tortured, or killed in custody.… The documents show that senior officials endorsed the abuse of prisoners as a matter of policy—sometimes by tolerating it, sometimes by encouraging it, and sometimes by expressly authorizing it.” The book presents a number of damning claims, all backed by extensive documentation, including the following: [American Civil Liberties Union, 10/22/2007] General Michael Dunlavey, who oversaw prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo and considered former camp commander Brigadier General Rick Baccus too soft on the detainees [BBC, 10/16/2002] , and who asked the Pentagon to approve more aggressive interrogation methods for the camp, claimed that he received his “marching orders” from Bush. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in overseeing the interrogation of a Guantanamo prisoner named Mohammed al-Khatani, the alleged would-be 20th 9/11 hijacker (see July 2002). Al-Khatani was “stripped naked, paraded in front of female interrogators, made to wear women’s underwear on his head, led around on a leash, and forced to perform dog tricks.” It is not clear just what being “personally involved” entails. Rumsfeld did not himself authorize such methods, but according to the investigator who documented the al-Khatani abuse session, Rumsfeld “failed to place a ‘throttle’ over abusive ‘applications’ of the ‘broad techniques’ that he did authorize….” Interrogators who used abusive ‘SERE’ (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) methods at Guantanamo did so because the Pentagon had endorsed those methods and required interrogators to be trained in the use of those methods (see December 2001). FBI personnel complained of abuses at Guantanamo; these instances of abuse were authorized by the chain of command within the Defense Department. Some of the most disturbing interrogation methodologies displayed in photos from Abu Ghraib were used at Guantanamo, with the endorsement of Rumsfeld, and that Major General Geoffrey Miller’s aggressive plan to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib was endorsed by senior Defense officials. Bush and his senior officials have always insisted that abuse and torture was limited to a few unauthorized soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Yet a Defense Department “Information Paper” shows that, three weeks before the Abu Ghraib photos appeared in the press, the US Army knew of at least 62 allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of which had no relation to Abu Ghraib. The Defense Department held prisoners as young as 12 years old. The Defense Department approved holding prisoners in cells as small as 3 feet wide, 4 feet long, and 18 inches high. Special Forces units held prisoners in cells only slightly larger than that. [American Civil Liberties Union, 10/22/2007]

A federal appeals court hears the case of alleged al-Qaeda sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was the victor in a recent court decision that ruled he could no longer be held in military detention with no access to the US court system (see June 11, 2007). Al-Marri’s lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, asks the Fourth US Court of Appeals to uphold the recent verdict, which was rendered by a three-judge panel from the same court. Now the entire court is reconsidering the case at the government’s request. Hafetz says the court must uphold the decision. “To rule otherwise is to sanction a power the president has never had and was never meant to have.” Authorization for the Use of Military Force - Judge Paul Neimeyer, a George H. W. Bush appointee, challenges Hafetz’s assertion that al-Marri cannot be held in military custody because he was not captured on a battlefield; to make such a claim would mean “25 or 30 terrorists could sneak into the US” and the military could not stop them. Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre makes the same argument that the appeals court panel rejected—that Congress gave the president the authority to seize and detain anyone affiliated with al-Qaeda, regardless of where they were captured, when it passed its Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) after the 9/11 attacks (see September 14-18, 2001). Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, appointed to the bench by former president Ronald Reagan, says that Congress could appeal or revise the AUMF whenever it likes. [Associated Press, 10/31/2007] Wilkinson acknowledges that many have concerns that the AUMF “may have authorized some sweeping detention problem… [, b]ut people are not being swept off the streets of Omaha.” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz interjects, “No, it was Peoria.” Question of Constitutionality - Wilkinson wonders why the “carefully targeted response by the government” has created “all this hoopla?” Comparing the detention of al-Marri and another enemy combatants, Jose Padilla, to the round-ups of German-Americans during World War I and of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Wilkinson asks if “we’ve lost our sense of perspective.” Judge Roger Gregory says: “The calculus for determining constitutionality is not whether we have a good king or a bad king. It’s not whether he stays his hand in generosity.” Motz and Gregory were the majority judges in the June decision. When Garre argues that al-Marri had ample opportunity to challenge his detention, and “squandered” those opportunities, Judge William Traxler asks, “How does a person who’s held incommunicado challenge” his detention? [Baltimore Daily Record, 11/1/2007]

Marc Falkoff. [Source: Northern Illinois University]Law professor Marc Falkoff, who represents some of the Guantanamo terror suspects, says that the resignation of Colonel Morris Davis as the lead prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions trials (see October 4, 2007) is important not just because only 80 of the 350 detainees are slated to be tried, leaving the other 270 in what Falkoff calls a “legal limbo, subject to indefinite detention without charge or trial or any court oversight for the duration of the war on terror,” but because of Davis’s revelations that the commissions have been tainted by political considerations. Davis’s resignation “may finally signal to the American public that politics rather than principle reigns at Guantanamo, and that decisions about the administration of justice at the camp are being made—largely outside of public view and without accountability—by political actors for nakedly political reasons.” As an example, Falkoff notes that every European in custody has been returned to their home countries, but 90% of the Yemenis in detention remain in custody even though many have been cleared for release by the US military. Falkoff says that he and his colleagues have for over three years visited their clients in Guantanamo to bring them what he calls “good news” about the court victories they have won. Falkoff writes, “To a man, upon hearing our news, our clients have smiled politely and shrugged, pointing out to us that they still have not had their day in court and that they still are not treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions. ‘You have to understand,’ they tell us, ‘this is all a big game.’ More and more, I am starting to think they are right.” [Jurist, 11/2/2007]

Evan Wallach, a New York judge who teaches the law of war at two New York City law schools, pens an editorial for the Washington Post protesting the argument that waterboarding has somehow become legal. Wallach, a former Judge Advocate General officer in the Nevada National Guard, recalls routinely lecturing military policemen about their legal obligations towards their prisoners. He writes that he always concluded by saying: “I know you won’t remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” He is proud to note that the unit he was with, the 72nd Military Police Company, “refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.” Waterboarding Is Real, Not Simulated, Drowning - Wallach then explains what waterboarding is. It is not “simulated drowning,” as many media reports characterize it: “That’s incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs, and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding’s effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.” Prosecution of Waterboarding as Torture Goes Back to 1898 - Wallach notes that after World War II, several Japanese soldiers were tried and executed for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. One former POW, Lieutenant Chase Nielsen, testified: “I was given several types of torture.… I was given what they call the water cure.… Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning… just gasping between life and death.” The waterboarding of POWs was one of the driving forces behind the US’s organization of war crimes trials for senior Japanese military and civilian officials. Wallach writes: “Leading members of Japan’s military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.” (Weeks later, torture opponent Senator John McCain will cite the Japanese prosecutions in a presidential debate—see November 29, 2007). Wallach notes that as far back as 1898, US soldiers were court-martialed for waterboarding Filipino guerrillas during the Spanish-American War. More recently, a group of Filipino citizens sued, in a US district court, the estate of former Phillipine President Ferdinand Marcos, claiming they had been waterboarded and subjected to other tortures. The court awarded the plaintiffs $766 million in damages, and wrote: “[T]he plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to… the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee’s mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation.” In 1983, a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies were convicted of violating prisoners’ civil rights by subjecting them to a procedure similar to waterboarding (see 1983). Wallach concludes: “We know that US military tribunals and US judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That’s a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is—as well as what it ought to be.” [Washington Post, 11/4/2007]

Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, breaches the rule of secrecy in revealing information about classified briefings to object to what he says are mischaracterizations of his and other Congressional lawmakers’ support for the administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects. In a statement on the floor of the Senate opposing the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to become Attorney General (see November 8, 2007), Feingold says, “Last week the White House press secretary again implied the members of Congress who have been briefed in the CIA’s interrogation program have approved it or consented to it. That is not the case. I have vigorously opposed the program and continue to do so. The program is of highly questionable legality, it is inconsistent with our values as a nation, and it does not make our nation any safer. In fact, I believe it may have the effect of exposing Americans, including other US personnel, to greater risk.” Feingold and other lawmakers are bound not to reveal the nature of such classified briefings, or even that they participated in them. Feingold reveals his own participation in some of the briefings because he believes that the administration is taking advantage of that secrecy restriction to “spin” the issue as regards the members’ reactions and levels of support. Feingold continues, “I have detailed the reasons for my strong objections to the CIA’s program in classified correspondence sent very shortly after I was first briefed on it (see May 1-10, 2007). More recently I’ve stated my opposition publicly, although I am prohibited by classification rules from providing further details about my concerns in a public setting.” Feingold calls one of the most notorious techniques employed by the CIA, waterboarding, “barbaric,” notes that it “has been used by some of the most evil regimes in history” and “has been considered torture in this country for over a century,” and asks, “If Judge Mukasey won’t say the simple truth—that this barbaric practice is torture—how can we count on him to stand up to the White House on other issues?” [US Senate, 11/7/2007; Washington Post, 12/9/2007]

Michael Mukasey. [Source: US Department of Justice]After two months of controversy, and a round of sporadically contentious Senate confirmation hearings, former judge Michael Mukasey narrowly wins the Senate’s approval to become the next attorney general, by an almost-party line 53-40 vote. Musakey replaces Alberto Gonzales, who resigned under fire in September 2007. Many Democrats vote against Mukasey because of his refusal to categorize the interrogation technique of waterboarding as torture, and his refusal to say that he would oppose President Bush’s insistence on eavesdropping on US citizens. Some Democrats took comfort in Mukasey’s characterization of waterboarding as “repugnant,” but others were not pleased by his refusal to say that the practice constitutes torture. Two key Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) refused to block Mukasey from going to the Senate for a confirmation vote. Both indicated that they reluctantly supported Mukasey’s nomination because the Justice Department needs an immediate infusion of leadership—Schumer called the department “adrift and rudderless” and in need of “a strong and independent leader”—and they feared if Mukasey was not confirmed, President Bush would put someone worse in the position as an interim appointment. [CNN, 11/8/2007] Schumer says he eventually decided to vote for Mukasey after the judge said “if Congress passed further legislation in this area, the president would have no legal authority to ignore it and Judge Mukasey would enforce it.” But Schumer’s colleague, Ted Kennedy (D-MA), is unimpressed. “Enforcing the law is the job of the attorney general,” Kennedy says. “It’s a prerequisite—not a virtue that enhances a nominee’s qualifications.” Ben Cardin (D-MD) wonders just how far, and how specifically, Congress will have to go to outlaw torture. He asks, “Are we going to have to outlaw the rack because there’s a question whether the rack is torture in this country?” [National Public Radio, 11/7/2007] Arlen Specter (R-PA), the committee’s ranking Republican, calls Mukasey “ethical, honest [and] not an intimate of the president.” [CNN, 11/8/2007] Mukasey is quietly sworn in only hours after winning the Senate vote. [National Public Radio, 11/9/2007] All four Democratic senators running for president—Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Barack Obama (D-IL), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and Christopher Dodd (D-CT)—have said they oppose Mukasey’s nomination. Obama calls Mukasey’s refusal to label waterboarding as torture “appalling,” and notes that Mukasey’s belief that the president “enjoys an unwritten right to secretly ignore any law or abridge our constitutional freedoms simply by invoking national security” disqualify him for the position. The other candidates make similar statements. [Fox News, 10/30/2007] However, none of them actually show up to cast their vote for or against Mukasey. John McCain (R-AZ), another senator running for president, also does not vote. [Associated Press, 11/8/2007] Three days after Mukasey’s confirmation, the New York Times writes a blistering editorial excoriating both the Bush administration and the compliant Senate Democrats for allowing Mukasey to become attorney general (see November 11, 2007).

The CIA “erroneously” misled the court and the lawyers involved in the ongoing prosecution of 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui (see April 22, 2005), it admits in a letter released today. In court declarations on May 9, 2003 and on November 14, 2005, the CIA stated it had no recordings of interrogations of “enemy combatants.” Now it admits it had two video tapes and one audio tape. Moussaoui’s lawyers want the tapes as part of his defense. The federal prosecutors say they just recently learned of the tapes, but they have been assured by the CIA that the tapes have no bearing on Moussaoui’s case, and no one on the tapes mentions either Moussaoui or the 9/11 plot. The prosecutors assert that, while the CIA errors are “unfortunate,” no harm was done to Moussaoui, who pled guilty and is serving a life sentence for his complicity in the attacks (see May 3, 2006). The letter, which has been heavily censored for public consumption, reads in part, “We bring the errors to the court’s attention… as part of our obligation of candor to the court.… The government will promptly apprise the court of any further developments.” [Reuters, 11/13/2007]

Jamil al-Banna speaking to the press after returning to Britain. [Source: Getty Images]On November 18, 2007, two British residents, Jamil al-Banna and Omar Deghayes, are released from the Guantanamo prison and returned to Britain. However, both men are immediately arrested when they arrive in Britain, because Spain has had an outstanding extradition request for them and two others since December 2003. The two others were later cleared of all wrongdoing. Al-Banna and Deghayes are released on bail a month later. [BBC, 12/20/2007] Then, on March 6, 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon drops the extradition request after ruling that they are unfit to stand trial. British doctors who recently examined them say they are in poor health due to torture and inhumane treatment at Guantanamo (see March 2003-November 18, 2007). For instance, al-Banna is said to be severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and has diabetes, hypertension, and back pain. [Guardian, 3/6/2008] However, an article in The Guardian will say that while the two men are in poor health, that is really just a face-saving excuse to drop the extradition. Al-Banna in particular appears to have been framed by the British intelligence agency MI5, which gave the CIA false information about him and his friend Bisher al-Rawi that led to their capture and long imprisonment (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002 and December 8, 2002-March 2003). Al-Rawi was freed from Guantanamo earlier in the year (see April 1, 2007). The Guardian will say of al-Banna and Deghayes: “The innocence of the men will probably not be acknowledged publicly. It should be, if they are to rebuild their lives after the years of horror.… British complicity in the rendition of al-Banna from the Gambia to Afghanistan, and then to Guantanamo Bay, is in the public domain and shames us all.” [Guardian, 3/6/2008]

Republican senator and presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ) says that during World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and hanged for war crimes involving the waterboarding of American prisoners of war. “There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that [waterboarding] as torture otherwise we wouldn’t have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans,” McCain says. He notes that he forgot to bring this piece of information up during the previous night’s debate with fellow Republican candidates; during the debate, he criticized former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) for refusing to say what interrogation techniques he would rule out if president. “I would also hope that he would not want to be associated with a technique which was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in one of the great eras of genocide in history, and is being used on Burmese monks as we speak,” McCain says. “America is a better nation than that.” Waterboarding is banned by US law and international treaties. “If the United States was in another conflict, which could easily happen, with another country, and we have allowed that kind of torture to be inflicted on people we hold captive, then there’s nothing to prevent that enemy from also torturing American prisoners,” McCain adds. [Associated Press, 11/29/2007]

In a statement released by CIA Director Michael Hayden, the CIA admits that it has destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (see Spring-Late 2002 and November 2005). [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] The statement is apparently released to preempt a New York Times article on the verge of publication that would have revealed the destruction. [Washington Post, 12/7/2007] The fact that the CIA had videoed detainee interrogations was made public a few weeks previously (see November 13, 2007). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 10/25/2007 ] According to several former intelligence officials, there is concern that the tapes could have set off controversies about the legality of the interrogations and generated a backlash in the Middle East. [New York Times, 12/8/2007] Numerous political figures condemn the destruction in strong terms. For example, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) says, “We haven’t seen anything like this since the 18½-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon,” and, “What would cause the CIA to take this action? The answer is obvious—coverup.” Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) says, “What is at stake here goes to the heart of the rule of law and justice in America.” Human rights activists are also angry, and an Amnesty International spokesman says, “It falls into a pattern of measures that have been taken that obstruct accountability for human rights violations.” [CBS News, 12/7/2007; ABC News, 12/7/2007] Both the Justice Department and the CIA’s Inspector General initiate preliminary inquiries. The House and Senate intelligence committees also start investigations. [Los Angeles Times, 12/9/2007]

Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) says that he did not know about the destruction of CIA videos of detainee interrogations (see November 2005 and December 6, 2007). [US Congress, 12/7/2007] This contradicts a statement by CIA Director Michael Hayden saying that, “Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed.” [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] The CIA says that the committee was informed of the destruction in November 2006, but, “A review of the November 2006 hearing transcript finds no mention of tapes being destroyed.” [US Congress, 12/7/2007] The House Intelligence Committee was apparently informed in March 2007. [CBS News, 12/7/2007] However, the committee will say to Hayden that, “The notification came in the form of an offhand comment you made in response to a question,” and, “We do not consider this to be sufficient notification.” [US Congress, 12/7/2007] There is also a dispute over what happened when the committees were first informed of the videos’ existence. Hayden says, “The leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency’s intention to dispose of the material.” [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] Some political leaders were informed of the tapes in 2003, but urged that they not be destroyed (see November 2005).

Although it is reported that the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose Rodriguez, is the man most responsible for the destruction of videotapes showing detainee interrogations (see November 2005 and December 6, 2007), some commentators are skeptical of this. A former intelligence official says, “This looks like he was tossed under a giant bus… How likely is it that he took this decision on his own, especially when he’s not in the videotapes and wouldn’t be affected directly? Not very likely.” [Harpers, 12/8/2007] A former intelligence official says he is concerned Rodriguez is being unfairly singled out for blame over the matter. [New York Times, 12/11/2007] According to attorney Scott Horton, by midday on December 7, shortly after news breaks that the CIA destroyed videotapes of detainee interrogations, “White House off-the-record explainers were extremely busy pointing fingers at one man, the designated scapegoat… So the sacrificial beast now has a name: it is Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.” Horton also sees a shift between the line initially taken by officials, and a later alteration: “Yesterday we are told, in highly implausible statements coming from General Hayden, that the CIA had acted completely appropriately… The issue had been considered, reviewed and cleared. Twenty-four hours later, there is a radical shift of course. Now we learn that the White House didn’t know about the decision and certainly wouldn’t have approved it.” Horton ascribes the shift to worries about the legality of destroying the tapes, especially as they may have been requested by a judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial (see May 7-9, 2003 and November 3-14, 2005), problems in prosecutions where evidence has been destroyed, and a general lack of plausibility. Former CIA officer Larry Johnson will also be skeptical: “Jose Rodriguez will not be the only one walking the public plank on this issue. In fact, he did not undertake this mission without the permission or direction from higher ups. And when you are the Deputy Director of Operations, there are not a lot of people above you.” [Harpers, 12/8/2007]

Following the revelation that the CIA has destroyed videotapes of detainee interrogations (see November 2005 and December 6, 2007), most of the media assume that the reason for the destruction is that the tapes must show CIA officers torturing detainees and “the CIA did not want the tapes seen in public because they are too graphic and could lead to indictments.” However, author and former CIA officer Robert Baer will suggest there may be other reasons: “I would find it very difficult to believe the CIA would deliberately destroy evidence material to the 9/11 investigation, evidence that would cover up a core truth, such as who really was behind 9/11. On the other hand I have to wonder what space-time continuum the CIA exists in, if they weren’t able to grasp what a field day the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are going to have with this… Still, the people who think 9/11 was an inside job might easily be able to believe that Abu Zubaida [one of the detainees who was videotaped] named his American accomplices in the tape that has now been destroyed by the CIA. It isn’t going to help that the Abu Zubaida investigation has a lot of problems even without destroyed evidence. When Abu Zubaida was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, two ATM cards were found on him. One was issued by a bank in Saudi Arabia (a bank close to the Saudi royal family) and the other to a bank in Kuwait. As I understand it, neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia has been able to tell us who fed the accounts (see Shortly After March 28, 2002). Also, apparently, when Abu Zubaida was captured, telephone records, including calls to the United States, were found in the house he was living in. The calls stopped on September 10, and resumed on September 16 (see Early September 2001 and September 16, 2001 and After). There’s nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed.” [Time, 12/7/2007]

Several inquiries are launched into the destruction by the CIA of videotapes showing detainee interrogations. The Justice Department begins a preliminary inquiry. It writes to the CIA’s top lawyer, John Rizzo, noting he has undertaken to ensure all currently existing records are preserved. [Associated Press, 12/8/2007] The CIA’s Inspector General begins an inquiry. One of the questions it will address is whether the destruction was obstruction of justice. [Associated Press, 12/11/2007] However, some Democratic lawmakers raise questions about the propriety of inquiries run by the Justice Department, as its lawyers offered advice about the tapes, and the CIA Inspector General, who reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed. [Washington Post, 12/15/2007] The House Intelligence Committee starts an inquiry. Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes says it is planning a “broad review” of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, but adds, “I’m not looking for scapegoats.” [International Herald Tribune, 12/8/2007] The committee requests all cables, memos and e-mails related to the videotapes, as well as legal advice given to CIA officials before the tapes were destroyed. [New York Times, 12/15/2007] The Senate Intelligence Committee also begins an inquiry. [FindLaw, 12/14/2007] The House Judiciary Committee sends letters to CIA Director Michael Hayden and Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking whether the Justice Department provided the CIA with legal advice. [Associated Press, 12/7/2007] The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigates whether the Federal Records Act has been violated. [FindLaw, 12/14/2007] There is a debate in a court case involving 11 Guantanamo detainees about whether the tapes were subject to a preservation order issued by the judge in that case (see December 14, 2007).

Several current and former members of Congress have varying recollections of being given a classified briefing in the months after the 9/11 attacks on the interrogation methods being used by the CIA on terror suspects, including waterboarding (see September 2002). Former House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss recalls: “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing. And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.” Former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) says he does not recall ever being briefed about waterboarding or other extreme interrogation methods, “Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn’t object.” Graham says he believes waterboarding and many of the other interrogation techniques used by the CIA are illegal and constitute torture. Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refuses to comment on the briefings, but a source familiar with her position on the matter says she recalls some discussions of enhanced interrogation, and that she was told the techniques described to her were in the planning stages at the time of the briefings. The source acknowledges that Pelosi raised no objections at the time. Former ranking House Intelligence Committee member Jane Harman (D-CA) says that in the months after the briefing, she filed a classified letter with the CIA officially protesting the interrogation program. Harman says that she had been prevented from publicly revealing the letter, or the CIA interrogation program, because of strict rules of secrecy. “When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath—one of secrecy,” she says. “I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.” The “Gang of Four” consists of the ranking Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Pat Roberts (R-KS), then the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refuses to discuss his participation in the briefings, as does the then-ranking Democrat on that committee, John D. Rockefeller (D-WV). Since 2005, Rockefeller has pushed for expanded Congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA practices. “I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation activities,” Rockefeller says. [Washington Post, 12/9/2007]

John Kiriakou. [Source: ABC News]Former CIA officer John Kiriakou gives the first of several media interviews around this time about the agency’s use of waterboarding and torture, to ABC. In this interview and others Kiriakou, who led the team that captured militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), makes several points: Zubaida was waterboarded. This is the first official on-the-record acknowledgment by any CIA official that the controversial technique that simulates drowning was used. Zubaida was only waterboarded once, for about 30 to 35 seconds. (This is untrue. Zubaida was actually waterboarded at least 83 times—see April 18, 2009.) After the waterboarding, Zubaida became co-operative; he had previously been uncooperative. (This is also allegedly untrue—see June 2002.) Kiriakou says, “The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” Kiriakou thinks the attacks were not to be on US soil, but overseas, although he is not sure. Waterboarding and the other techniques were used because of a sense of urgency. “Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time—much of the time—and we didn’t have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming.” Use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques is tightly controlled in the agency. Each application of a technique had to be specifically approved by the deputy director for operations. Kiriakou implies that waterboarding is torture and should remain banned now, but the circumstances of the time warranted its use. He believes that waterboarding both compromised American principles and saved lives. “Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique,” he says. “And I struggle with it.” Although he was personally involved in Zubaida’s capture, Kiriakou was not present at the interrogations and only learned about them at CIA headquarters. [ABC News, 12/10/2007; ABC News, 12/10/2007 ; ABC News, 12/10/2009 ] Over the next few days, Kiriakou gives a number interviews to other media outlets with basically the same information. The New York Times will call the series of interviews a “media blitz.” [New York Times, 12/11/2007; New York Times, 4/28/2009] The media he speaks to include the Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC (see December 11, 2007). A CNN anchor even calls him “the man of the hour.” [New York Times, 4/28/2009] Kiriakou garners praise for his poise in front of the camera. For example, Harper’s journalist Scott Horton will call him “telegenic,” whereas Foreign Policy magazine commentator Annie Lowery will opt for “telegenic and well spoken.” [Harpers, 12/21/2007; Foreign Policy, 4/28/2009]

Colonel Morris Davis, the former head of the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, writes in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that he resigned (see October 4, 2007) because he “concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system.” He adds that, “I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.” Davis writes that while the legitimacy of the military commissions rests on the belief that they are being conducted fairly and honestly, the political appointee who is now the “convening authority,” Susan Crawford, is “not living up to that obligation.” The convening authority has “no counterpart in civilian courts,” Davis explains, and has great powers over certain aspects of prosecutions, such as which charges go to trial, which are dismissed, who serves on the jury, and whether to approve requests for experts, and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences. The position is mandated by law to be absolutely impartial, favoring neither prosecutions or defendants. While Crawford’s predecessor conducted himself with the required impartiality: “Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution’s pretrial preparation of cases… drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things. How can you direct someone to do something—use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance—and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused.” [Los Angeles Times, 12/10/2007]

President George Bush says he was unaware that the CIA had videotaped detainee interrogations. The CIA had videotaped some interrogations in 2002 (see Spring-Late 2002), but the tapes were destroyed in late 2005 (see November 2005), and this was disclosed five days previously (see December 6, 2007). Bush says, “My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when [CIA Director] Michael Hayden briefed me.” [ABC News, 12/11/2007] Bush took an interest in information coming from one of the detainees who was videotaped, Abu Zubaida (see Late March 2002), and normally a president would be informed about activities like the detainee interrogations. However, there appears to have been a long-standing deliberate policy of keeping Bush out of the loop regarding aggressive interrogation methods to protect him from any adverse consequences that might arise (see April 2002 and After).

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who has recently admitted that the agency waterboarded militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida (see December 10, 2007), gives another interview about the issue, this time to MSNBC “Today Show” host Matt Lauer. Kiriakou again repeats his talking points: the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaida, the use of this and other enhanced techniques was controlled by bureaucratic procedure, it led to intelligence, but it is torture. However, when Lauer asks whether the White House was involved in the decision, Kiriakou answers: “Absolutely.… This was a policy decision that was made at the White House with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.” Lauer plays a clip of an interview he did with President Bush over a year ago in which Bush said, “I told our people get information without torture and was assured by our Justice Department that we were not torturing.” Kiriakou responds to it, saying: “I disagree. I know that there was a high level policy debate on whether or not this was torture and that the Department of Justice and the White House counsel and the National Security Council decided that it was not, at the time.” [MSNBC, 12/11/2007] The CIA decides not to refer Kiriakou to the Justice Department for a leak investigation over his original interview at this time (see December 11, 2007). However, according to Harper’s magazine columnist Scott Horton, officials at the Justice Department and the National Security Council are “furious” that Kiriakou has mentioned their role in the waterboarding, and insist that he be investigated (see December 20, 2007). [Harpers, 12/21/2007]

Following appearances before the Senate and then House Intelligence Committees, CIA Director Michael Hayden takes a different line than the previous week over the CIA’s destruction of videotapes showing detainee interrogations. When the scandal first broke, he had said: “The leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency’s intention to dispose of the material. Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed.” [Central Intelligence Agency, 12/6/2007] However, the committees protested (see December 7, 2007) and, after his closed-door meeting with the House committee on December 12, he says, “particularly at the time of the destruction we could have done an awful lot better at keeping the committee alerted and informed.” [Fox News, 12/13/2007] His private explanation to the Senate committee leaves many questions unanswered, but chairman Jay Rockefeller calls it “a useful and not yet complete hearing.” [Associated Press, 12/11/2007] House committee chairman Silvestre Reyes, who expresses the committee’s “frustration” at not being kept informed about the tapes, calls the meeting “the first step in what we feel is going to be a long-term investigation,” and says some parts of Hayden’s briefing are “stunning.” [Fox News, 12/13/2007] Hayden points out to both committees that he arrived at the CIA after the tapes had been destroyed, so “Other people in the agency know about this far better than I.” [Associated Press, 12/11/2007]

Some US lawmakers indicate they may support the appointment of a special counsel to look into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes (see December 6, 2007), in addition to various other inquiries that are launched at this time (see December 7, 2007 and Shortly After). Initially, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) indicates he will support a special counsel if the Bush administration impedes a congressional probe and an investigation initiated by the Justice Department: “The CIA, the Justice Department, the Bush White House and every American should know that if these investigations encounter resistance or are unable to find the truth, I will not hesitate to add my voice to those calling for a special counsel.” [The Hill, 12/11/2007] Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, backs the call. [The Hill, 12/11/2007] After some lawmakers begin to question whether the Justice Department will properly investigate the scandal (see December 14, 2007), Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) expresses some support for a special counsel: “I am concerned whether we are going to get to the real facts… [Because the inquiry is] being very closely held, the question is whether the American people will have a sense that this investigation is on the level. Unless you bring the FBI in, and unless you bring in the possibility of a special prosecutor as they had in Watergate, I am not sure we’ll get to that point.” [Bloomberg, 12/14/2007]However, a special prosecutor is opposed by some, such as Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). [The Hill, 12/11/2007] Attorney General Michael Mukasey calls such appointment “the most hypothetical of hypotheticals.” [Associated Press, 12/11/2007]

Morris Davis, the former lead prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions who resigned in October (see October 4, 2007), tells interviewer Dan Rather that the upcoming prosecutions at Guantanamo are largely driven by political concerns (see October 19, 2007). “I think the big fear that was expressed was if Hillary Clinton wins the White House [in 2008]—this whole show goes away, and Guantanamo is shut down.… So, there’s a distrust of the military. And you’ve got political involvement. What I’ve seen in this process is that if you combine—ya know, excessive—arrogance with excessive ignorance—you wind up with six years later with—one guilty plea done.” [Business Wire, 12/14/2007]

Kenneth Wainstein. [Source: White House]The Justice Department attempts to delay probes by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into the destruction of CIA tapes showing detainee interrogations, saying the administration cannot provide the witnesses or documents the committees want, as this may jeopardize its own investigations. Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, and CIA Inspector General John Helgerson write to congressional intelligence committee leaders saying, “We fully appreciate the committee’s oversight interest in this matter, but want to advise you of concerns that actions responsive to your request would represent significant risk to our preliminary inquiry.” However, Wainstein and Helgerson are unable to say when they will have results. Attorney General Michael Mukasey also rejects a request for details about the Justice Department-CIA inquiry (see December 14, 2007). [Washington Post, 12/15/2007; New York Times, 12/15/2007] House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and Vice Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) threaten to issue subpoenas and respond in a joint statement: “We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation… Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work.” [Washington Post, 12/15/2007] They add: “It’s clear that there’s more to this story than we have been told, and it is unfortunate that we are being prevented from learning the facts. The executive branch can’t be trusted to oversee itself.” [Associated Press, 12/15/2007] The New York Times comments, “The inquiry by the House committee had been shaping up as the most aggressive investigation into the destruction of the tapes.” The intelligence committee inquiries are similar to those of the Justice Department and CIA Inspector General, but also aim to determine whether anyone in the executive branch had sought to have the tapes destroyed to eliminate possible evidence that CIA officers had used banned interrogation techniques. [New York Times, 12/15/2007] A CIA spokesman says, “Director Hayden has said the Agency will cooperate fully with both the preliminary inquiry conducted by [Justice Department] and CIA’s Office of Inspector General, and with the Congress. That has been, and certainly still is, the case.” [Washington Post, 12/15/2007] However, the CIA fails to provide documents the House committee has requested. [New York Times, 12/15/2007] Commentator Scott Horton will call this “a conscious decision to shield criminal conduct from exposure before the watchdog appointed by the Constitution: Congress.” [Harpers, 12/15/2007]

The Justice Department urges a federal judge not to begin an inquiry into the destruction of CIA videotapes in a case involving 11 Guantanamo Bay detainees. The judge in the case, Henry Kennedy, had previously issued a ruling that evidence related to the detainees should be preserved (see June-July 2005). After attorneys for the detainees file a motion saying the CIA’s destruction of the tapes “raises grave concerns about the government’s compliance with the preservation order entered by this court,” the administration argues it was not under an obligation to preserve the videotapes and tells US District Judge Kennedy that asking for information about the tapes’ destruction could “potentially complicate” a Justice Department inquiry into it. The Justice Department also says the judge lacks jurisdiction and is worried he will compel CIA officers to testify. In addition, the destroyed tapes were made outside Guantanamo, whereas the order previously issued by the judge only directly affected material in Guantanamo. However, evidence from “a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant” is being used against one of the detainees, and this lieutenant may have been shown on the destroyed tapes, making them relevant to the case. The Associated Press calls the Justice Department’s request “unusual,” and law professor Douglas Kmiec comments, “It’s hard to know on the surface whether this is obstruction or an advancement of a legitimate inquiry.” [New York Times, 12/11/2007; Associated Press, 12/15/2007] Another law professor, Jonathon Turley, comments: “The Justice Department insists it will essentially investigate itself and then tells the court that because it is investigating itself it won’t turn over evidence of its possible criminal misconduct. It’s so circular, it’s maddening.” [ABC News, 12/15/2007] In early January 2008, Kennedy will decline to hold a hearing into the destruction, saying that the destroyed tapes were not directly related to this case, as they were not made in Guantanamo. He is also “influenced by the assurances of the Department of Justice” that its criminal investigation will cover the issue of whether the tapes’ destruction “was inconsistent with or violated any legal obligations.” [New York Times, 1/10/2008]

After it is revealed that the CIA has destroyed tapes showing detainee interrogations (see November 2005), congressional leaders Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) ask Attorney General Michael Mukasey for “a complete account of the Justice Department’s own knowledge of and involvement with” the tape destruction. News reports indicate the Justice Department did advise the CIA not to destroy the tapes as far back as 2003 (see 2003). The Justice Department is also asked whether it offered legal advice to the CIA or communicated with the White House about the issue. However, Mukasey refuses to answer any of the questions, replying that the Justice Department “has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters. This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.” [Washington Post, 12/15/2007] According to the New York Times, Justice Department officials describe this and another rebuff to congress (see December 14, 2007) as “an effort to caution Congress against meddling in the tapes case and other politically explosive criminal cases.” [New York Times, 12/15/2007]

Speaking about the CIA videotapes scandal, Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) says in a Fox News interview, “We have a system of checks and balances and it’s broken. We’re in Constitutional crisis because of the arrogant view of some in this administration that they can decide what the policy is, write the legal opinions to justify that policy and be accountable to no one.” And when asked about the Justice Department’s refusal to cooperate with any Congressional investigations into the scandal (see December 14, 2007), she says, “It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up.” Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is interviewed with Harman and is extremely critical of the leaders of the US intelligence community, calling them political, arrogant, and incompetent. “They’ve clearly demonstrated through the tapes case that they don’t believe that they are accountable to Congress.” [Raw Story, 12/16/2007]

The CIA videotapes destruction scandal reopens a debate about the usefulness of torturing al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. The FBI briefly used rapport-building techniques on Zubaida before the CIA took over and tortured him. On December 10, 2007, several days after the public disclosure that the videotapes of the CIA’s interrogation of Zubaida were destroyed, former CIA officer John Kiriakou admitted that Zubaida was tortured by the use of waterboarding (see December 10, 2007). Kiriakou claimed that waterboarding was so effective that Zubaida completely broke after just one session of waterboarding lasting 35 seconds. [ABC News, 12/10/2007] This claim became a frequently used media talking point. However, on December 18, the Washington Post presents a contrary account, stating, “There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla” (see Late March through Early June, 2002). The Post notes that Kiriakou helped capture Zubaida but was not present at any of his interrogations. Furthermore, “other former and current officials” disagree with Kiriakou’s claim “that Abu Zubaida’s cooperation came quickly under harsh interrogation or that it was the result of a single waterboarding session. Instead, these officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months.” [Washington Post, 12/18/2007] The most in-depth previous media accounts suggesed that the FBI interrogation of Zubaida was getting good intelligence while the CIA torture of him resulted in very dubious intelligence (see Mid-April-May 2002 and June 2002).

Speaking on CNN, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley outlines the criminal offenses that may have been committed in the scandal surrounding the destruction of CIA videotapes showing detainee interrogations: “There are at least six identifiable crimes from obstruction of justice to obstruction of congress, perjury, conspiracy and false statements. What is often forgotten, the crime of torturing suspects. Now, if that crime was committed, it was a crime that would conceivably be ordered by the president himself, only the president can order those types of special treatments or interrogation techniques.” [CNN, 12/19/2007]

The White House protests about a sub-heading in a New York Times story on the destruction of CIA videotapes showing detainee interrogations, and the New York Times admits the subheading was misleading and prints a correction. The subheading is “White House role was wider than it said” (in discussions about what to do with the tapes), but White House spokesperson Dana Perino complains. She issues a statement saying that the subheading is “pernicious and troubling,” as it indicates a conscious effort to mislead by the White House, which has not actually yet officially described its role in the tapes’ destruction except to say that President Bush thinks he was not informed. Even though it corrects the subheading, the paper notes that the White House “had not challenged the content of our story.” [New York Times, 12/19/2007; New York Times, 12/20/2007; Washington Post, 12/20/2007]

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) replies to a letter from the Justice Department that claims the CIA’s detainee interrogation program is fully compliant with the Geneva Conventions and with US and international law (see September 27, 2007). Wyden challenges the legal rationale for the claims, noting that the cases cited do not directly apply to the question of whether the definitions of “humane treatment” and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” can vary depending on the identity of the detainee and the circumstances surrounding his interrogation. He also challenges the Justice Department’s rather narrow interpretation of the protections afforded by the Eighth Amendment and the Detainee Treatment Act (see December 30, 2005). [US Senate, 3/6/2008 ]

The CIA refers the case of John Kiriakou, a former officer who has recently admitted the agency waterboarded militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida (see December 10, 2007), to the Justice Department for investigation. The department is to investigate whether Kiriakou committed a criminal offence by illegally disclosing classified information in the interviews he gave about Zubaida’s treatment. [McClatchy, 12/20/2007] The CIA originally decided not to refer the case (see December 11, 2007), but pressure was applied by the Justice Department and National Security Council after Kiriakou revealed its involvement in a later interview (see December 11, 2007).

The Justice Department’s National Security Division and the CIA’s inspector general conclude their preliminary inquiry into the destruction of CIA videotapes showing the interrogation of detainees Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (see December 7, 2007 and Shortly After). They report that there is enough evidence to start a criminal investigation, but do not say for certain that a crime has been committed. [Salon, 1/2/2008] A prosecutor is appointed to head the investigation (see January 2, 2008).

In an op-ed published by the New York Times, former 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean and vice-chairman Lee Hamilton write that their 9/11 inquiry was “obstructed” by the CIA, which failed to provide them with videotapes of detainee interrogations. The White House also knew of the videotapes’ existence but failed to inform the Commission, which had repeatedly asked for all material related to detainee interrogations and was unhappy with what the CIA gave it (see Summer 2003-January 2004, Summer 2003, November 5, 2003-January 2004, and After January 2004). Kean and Hamilton write that the CIA “failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes—and did not tell us about them—obstructed our investigation. There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA—or the White House—of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.” [New York Times, 1/2/2008]

John Durham. [Source: Bob Child / Associated Press]After the Justice Department and CIA Inspector General conclude there should be a criminal probe into the destruction of videotapes showing interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (see January 2, 2008), Attorney General Michael Mukasey appoints John Durham, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to oversee the case. The investigation would usually be handled by the prosecutor’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, but that office is recused to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interests. Durham will not act as an independent special prosecutor like Patrick Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame Wilson case, but will report to the Deputy Attorney General. [Salon, 1/2/2008] Durham made his name as a prosecutor in a difficult organized crime case in Boston. [New York Times, 1/13/2008] House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) criticizes the appointment, saying, “it is disappointing that the Attorney General has stepped outside the Justice Department’s own regulations and declined to appoint a more independent special counsel in this matter… The Justice Department’s record over the past seven years of sweeping the administration’s misconduct under the rug has left the American public with little confidence in the administration’s ability to investigate itself. Nothing less than a special counsel with a full investigative mandate will meet the tests of independence, transparency and completeness.” [Salon, 1/2/2008]

Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla (see January 22, 2008) sues former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo. Padilla claims Yoo’s legal arguments led to his mistreatment and illegal detention at a US Navy brig. Padilla’s lawsuit says that Yoo’s memos led President Bush to designate Padilla as an “enemy combatant” (see June 10, 2002) and subject him to indefinite detention without being charged or having access to a lawyer. The lawsuit asks for only $1 in damages, and seeks a legal judgment declaring that the policies violated the US Constitution. “This is ultimately about right and wrong, not money,” says Padilla’s attorney Jonathan Freiman, a law professor at Yale University. Freiman says Yoo is being sued because “he gave the green light” to how to deal with Padilla. The lawsuit reiterates claims that Padilla was subjected to harsh interrogation techiques and mistreatment that amounted to torture, claims Justice Department and Pentagon officials deny. [Associated Press, 1/4/2008]

Jose Padilla (see May 14, 2007), convicted in August 2007 of conspiring to assist terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, is sentenced for his crimes. Padilla was not charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb,” as Bush administration officials have long alleged (see June 10, 2002). He is sentenced to over 17 years in prison, but is not sentenced to life in prison, as Judge Marcia Cooke could have given him. Cooke gives Padilla some credit for his detention in a US naval brig, and agrees that he was subjected to what she calls “harsh conditions” and “extreme environmental stresses” while there. “I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla… they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case,” she rules. Padilla does not get credit for time served. Two co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun (see 1993) and Kifah Wael Jayyousi (see (October 1993-November 2001)), are also convicted; Hassoun receives over 15 years in prison and Jayyousi is sentenced to over 12 years. Cooke says that the prosecution failed to prove that either defendant was responsible for any specific acts of terrorism. “There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped, or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere,” she rules. The reactions from the defendants’ lawyers and family members are mixed. “I feel good about everything. This is amazing,” says Padilla’s mother, Estela Lebron. Hassoun’s lawyer, Jeanne Baker, calls the verdict “a defeat for the government.” And Jayyousi’s lawyer, William Swor, says: “The government has not made America any safer. It has just made America less free.” [Associated Press, 1/22/2008] Padilla will serve his prison sentence at a so-called “supermax” prison facility in Colorado. Domestic terrorists such as Terry Nichols, convicted of conspiring to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994), “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski (see April 3, 1996), and al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui (see April 22, 2005) are also held at this facility. [Jurist, 4/19/2008]

US District Judge Richard Roberts says that CIA interrogation videotapes may have been relevant to a case before him and orders the administration to explain why they were destroyed in 2005, and also to say whether other evidence was destroyed. The government has three weeks to produce the report, as the judge thinks the tapes may have been relevant to the case of Guantanamo detainee Hani Abdullah. The charges against Abdullah are based, at least in part, on information obtained from militant leader Abu Zubaida, who was shown on the tapes and was subjected to waterboarding and other “enhanced techniques” (see Spring-Late 2002 and Mid-May 2002 and After). The report also has to explain what the government has done to preserve evidence since Roberts issued an order in July 2005 not to destroy it, what it is doing now, and whether any other potentially relevant evidence has been destroyed. [Associated Press, 1/24/2008]

CIA Director Michael Hayden and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testify to a Senate committee that US officials had indeed waterboarded three terrorist suspects (see May 2002-2003, Mid-May 2002 and After, (November 2002), and After March 7, 2003). Hayden and McConnell, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, say that while the CIA banned the use of waterboarding (see Between May and Late 2006), the agency might authorize it again if circumstances warranted. Hayden says that the CIA found it necessary to waterboard the three suspects—alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, militant training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida, and al-Qaeda manager Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—because the US believed they had information about an imminent attack, and because it needed information about al-Qaeda immediately. “Those two circumstances have changed,” says Hayden. McConnell calls waterboarding a “lawful technique” that could be used again if needed. Hayden says the CIA has held fewer than 100 detainees, and of those, less than a third were put through what he calls “enhanced techniques.” Hayden also admits that “private contractors” took part in subjecting detainees to those “enhanced techniques,” which many call torture. He says he is not sure if any contractors were involved in waterboarding anyone. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) calls for an immediate Justice Department investigation into whether waterboarding is a criminal act. [Wall Street Journal, 2/6/2008] Two days later, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announces his decision not to investigate the US’s use of waterboarding (see February 7, 2008).

In House testimony, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Lieutenant General Michael Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency say that they stand by their agencies’ decisions not to waterboard detainees. Two days before, CIA Director Michael Hayden and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testified that the CIA had used waterboarding and might do so again (see February 5, 2008). The Pentagon has banned its employees from using the tactic, and the FBI has stated, “its investigators do not use coercive tactics when interviewing terror suspects.” Rush Holt (D-NJ) asks Mueller and Maples why their agencies do not use coercive interrogation: “Do you never interrogate people who have critical information?” Mueller responds: “Our protocol is not to use coercive techniques. That is our protocol. We have lived by it. And it is sufficient and appropriate for our mission here in the United States.… We believe in the appropriateness of our techniques to our mission here in the United States.” Maples adds: “The Army Field Manual guides our efforts and the efforts of the armed forces.… We believe that the approaches that are in the Army Field Manual give us the tools that are necessary for the purpose under which we are conducting interrogations.” The field manual bans the use of coercion against detainees. [Think Progress, 2/7/2008] The same day, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announces his decision not to investigate the US’s use of waterboarding (see February 7, 2008).

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says he will not investigate the government’s use of waterboarding. “No, I am not, for this reason: Whatever was done as part of a CIA program at the time that it was done was the subject of a [Justice Department] opinion through the Office of Legal Counsel and was found to be permissible under the law as it existed then.” [Mother Jones, 2/7/2008]

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the presumptive Republican nominee for president, urges President Bush to veto an upcoming bill prohibiting waterboarding and other extreme methods of interrogation after himself voting against the bill. The bill passes the Senate on a largely partisan 51-45 vote. It has already passed the House on a similar party-line vote, and Bush has already announced his intention to veto the bill. McCain has won a reputation as an advocate of prisoner rights and a staunch opponent of torture; his five-year stint as a POW in North Vietnam is well-known. But McCain voted against the legislation when it came up for a vote in the Senate, and he opposes the bill now. McCain says he is opposed to waterboarding, but does not want the CIA restricted to following the practices outlined in the US Army Field Manual, as the legislation would require. McCain says: “I knew I would be criticized for it. I think I can show my record is clear. I said there should be additional techniques allowed to other agencies of government as long as they were not” torture. “I was on the record as saying that they could use additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. So the vote was in keeping with my clear record of saying that they could have additional techniques, but those techniques could not violate” international rules against torture. McCain has said he believes waterboarding is already prohibited by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (see December 30, 2005). And CIA director Michael Hayden has said that current law may well prohibit waterboarding; he claims to have stopped CIA agents from waterboarding detainees in 2006, and also claims that the technique was not used later than 2003. McCain’s Senate colleague, Charles Schumer (D-NY) says that if Bush vetoes the bill, then he in essence “will be voting in favor of waterboarding.” [New York Times, 2/13/2008; Associated Press, 2/21/2008] Bush will indeed veto the bill (see March 8, 2008).

Steven Bradbury, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), tells the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration routinely allowed the CIA to use interrogation tactics that were “quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening,” as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to constitute illegal torture. One of those techniques, waterboarding, is legal and not torture, Bradbury says, because it is a “procedure subject to strict limitations and safeguards.” Those standards and limitations make waterboarding as used by the CIA substantially different from historical uses of the technique as it was employed during the Spanish Inquisition and by the Japanese during World War II. Bradbury, asked if waterboarding violates US and international laws against torture, says it does not. Waterboarding as practiced by the CIA bears “no resemblance” to what torturers in time past have done. “There’s been a lot of discussion in the public about historical uses of waterboarding,” Bradbury says. The “only thing in common is the use of water.” Spanish and Japanese water torture techniques “involved the forced consumption of a mass amount of water.” When asked if he is aware of any “modern use” of waterboarding that involves the “lungs filling with water,” Bradbury says he is not. Bradbury says that the Japanese forced the ingestion of so much water that it was “beyond the capacity of the victim’s stomach.” Weight or pressure was then applied by standing or jumping on the stomach of the victim, sometimes leading to “blood coming of the victim’s mouth.” The Spanish Inquisition would use the technique to the point of “agony or death.” The CIA does not do that, Bradbury says. “Strict time limits” are involved—presumably governing the length of time that interrogators can induce the sensation of drowning. Additionally, “safeguards” and “restrictions” make waterboarding a much more controlled procedure. Together, waterboarding as practiced by the CIA is not torture. However, Bradbury admits that recent Supreme Court decisions have changed the OLC’s analysis, and says that in 2006 the CIA stopped using waterboarding. [TPM Muckraker, 2/14/2008; Washington Post, 2/18/2008]Bradbury's Comparison 'Obscene' - Bradbury claimed that no water entered the lungs of three al-Qaeda captives subjected to the practice; many believe that those captives had cellophane or cloth over their noses and mouths while waterboarded. Torture experts say that practice poses a serious risk of asphyxiation. Former OLC official Martin Lederman says he finds Bradbury’s testimony “chilling.” Lederman notes that “to say that this is not severe physical suffering—is not torture—is absurd. And to invoke the defense that what the Spanish Inquisition did was worse and that we use a more benign, non-torture form of waterboarding… is obscene.” Human rights experts have said that the CIA’s particular form of waterboarding is similar to those practiced by such regimes as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the French colonial government in Algeria, and the government of Myanmar (Burma). All three of those regimes have been criticized for brutality and flagrant human rights violations. [Washington Post, 2/18/2008]

Jeff Castelli, a former CIA Rome station chief involved in the blown rendition of Islamist extremist Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (see Noon February 17, 2003), is considered for the position of chief of the CIA’s station in New York. Reporter Jeff Stein calls this an “astounding comeback, especially considering that Italy is planning a trial in absentia of the CIA employees implicated in the kidnapping, perhaps as early as this spring.” Because of the kidnap allegations, if Castelli attempted to enter a European country, he would be arrested. One of Stein’s sources comments on the posting under consideration, “Well, they can’t send him overseas because of the Milan thing.” [Congressional Quarterly, 2/15/2008] However, Castelli will not get the position, and will leave the agency this year. [Congressional Quarterly, 9/17/2009]

The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, writes to Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Fine is responding to their request for an investigation of Justice Department officials’ role in authorizing and overseeing the use of waterboarding by CIA interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Fine notes: “[U]nder current law, the OIG [Office of the Inspector General] does not have jurisdiction to review the actions of [Justice Department] attorneys acting in their capacity to provide legal advice. Legislation that would remove this limitation has passed the House and is pending in the Senate (see April 23, 2008), but at this point the OIG does not have the jurisdiction to undertake the review you request.” [US Department of Justice, 2/19/2008 ]

Joseph Margulies. [Source: PBS]Joseph Margulies, a law professor at Northwestern University, and lawyer George Brent Mickum write of their plans to meet with Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) as part of his legal defense team. The lawyers write: “Zubaydah’s world became freezing rooms alternating with sweltering cells. Screaming noise replaced by endless silence. Blinding light followed by dark, underground chambers. Hours confined in contorted positions. And, as we recently learned, Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding. We do not know what remains of his mind, and we will probably never know what he experienced.” What exactly the CIA did to Zubaida may never be determined, as the agency destroyed the videotapes of his interrogations (see Spring-Late 2002). Zubaida’s subsequent confessions to FBI agents are essentially meaningless, the lawyers assert, because his will and mind were already irrevocably broken by the time of the FBI interviews. The lawyers hope to piece together what Zubaida knew and what was done to him, although they are not confident they will be given the documentation necessary to find out what they want to know. They fear that, if they are not able to learn the truth of Zubaida’s participation with al-Qaeda and the interrogation methods he was subjected to, then in his and others’ cases, the truth will be “only what the administration reports it to be. We hope it has not come to that.” [Washington Post, 2/23/2008]

Justice Department attorney Brian Benczkowski replies to a follow-up letter from Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is challenging the department’s claims that the CIA detainee interrogation program is fully compliant with US and international law (see December 20, 2007). Much of Benczkowski’s letter is a reiteration of points made in an earlier letter (see September 27, 2007), even citing the same legal cases that Wyden challenged as not directly relevant to the Justice Department’s arguments. Benczkowski reiterates that the definitions of “humane treatment” and “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” are flexible, in the department’s view, and can change drastically depending on the identity of the detainee and the circumstances surrounding his interrogation. The standards of compliance are also mitigated by the “nature and importance of the government interest,” he claims, giving as an example the possibility of abrogating a detainee’s fundamental rights under the Geneva Conventions and other statutes in order to force information about an impending terrorist attack from him. Benczkowski reiterates that the Eighth Amendment only applies to prisoners after they have been convicted of a crime; hence, detainees never tried or charged for crimes have no rights under that amendment. It is apparent that Benczkowski considers the discussion closed; he concludes his letter with the statement, “Please do not hesitate to contact the Department if we can be of assistance in other matters.” [US Department of Justice, 3/6/2008 ]

President Bush vetoes legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other “extreme” interrogation techniques. The legislation is part of a larger bill authorizing US intelligence activities. The US Army prohibits the use of waterboarding and seven other interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual; the legislation would have brought the CIA in line with US military practices. Waterboarding is banned by many countries and its use by the US and other regimes has been roundly condemned by US lawmakers and human rights organizations. The field manual also prohibits stripping prisoners naked; forcing them to perform or simulate sexual acts; beating, burning, or otherwise inflicting harm; subjecting prisoners to hypothermia; subjecting prisoners to mock executions; withholding food, water, or medical treatment; using dogs to frighten or attack prisoners; and hooding prisoners or strapping duct tape across their eyes. Reasoning for Veto - “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” Bush explains. The vetoed legislation “would diminish these vital tools.” Bush goes on to say that the CIA’s interrogation program has helped stop terrorist attacks on a US Marine base in Djibouti and the US consulate in Pakistan, as well as stopped plans for terrorists to fly hijacked planes into a Los Angeles tower or perhaps London’s Heathrow Airport. He gives no specifics, but adds, “Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland.” John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disagrees, saying he knows of no instances where the CIA has used such methods of interrogation to obtain information that led to the prevention of a terrorist attack. “On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop,” he says. CIA Director Michael Hayden says that the CIA will continue to work within both national and international law, but its needs are different from those of the Army, and it will follow the procedures it thinks best. Bush complains that the legislation would eliminate not just waterboarding, but “all the alternative procedures we’ve developed to question the world’s most dangerous and violent terrorists.” [Reuters, 3/8/2008; Associated Press, 3/8/2008]Criticism of Veto - Democrats, human rights leaders, and others denounce Bush’s veto. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) says, “This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good, yet he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future.” Feinstein notes that Bush ignored the advice of 43 retired generals and admirals, and 18 national security experts, who all supported the bill. “Torture is a black mark against the United States,” she says. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says she and fellow Democrats will try to override the veto and thus “reassert [the United States’s] moral authority.” Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First says, “The president’s refusal to sign this crucial legislation into law will undermine counterterrorism efforts globally and delay efforts to rebuild US credibility on human rights.” [Associated Press, 3/8/2008] New York Times journalist Steven Lee Myers writes that Bush vetoes the bill not just to assert his support for extreme interrogation techniques or to provide the government everything it needs to combat terrorism, but as part of his ongoing battle to expand the power of the presidency. Myers writes, “At the core of the administration’s position is a conviction that the executive branch must have unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting war.” [New York Times, 3/9/2008]

Mohammed Jawad, a young Guantanamo detainee held in US captivity for almost six years (see December 17, 2002) and charged with attempted murder (see October 7, 2007), is arraiged before a military commission. Jawad refuses to accept the assistance of his military counsel, Air Force Major David Frakt, says he knows of no civilian lawyer who would represent him, and says he does not wish to represent himself. Jawad tells the court he has no desire to continue the proceedings. The judge rules that Frakt will continue to represent Jawad. [Human Rights First, 9/2008]

Lawyers for alleged enemy combatant Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (see December 12, 2001) file papers with the court asserting that al-Marri was systematically abused by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) interrogators while in military custody. Al-Marri continues to be held in the Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina (see June 23, 2003). Additionally, al-Marri was told that cabinets full of videotapes of his interrogations exist, according to the legal filings. Al-Marri has been in federal detention, without charge, since 2003. The New York Times has reported that about 50 videotapes of interrogation sessions with al-Marri and fellow detainee Jose Padilla (see May 8, 2002) were recently found by Pentagon officials (see March 13, 2008). DIA spokesman Donald Black admits that one tape shows al-Marri being gagged with duct tape, but says that al-Marri brought that treatment upon himself by chanting loudly and disruptively. One of al-Marri’s lawyers, Jonathan Hafetz, says that the treatment al-Marri has been forced to endure is far worse than anything Black describes—al-Marri, Hafetz says, has been subjected to stress positions, sensory deprivation, and threats of violence or death. “On several occasions, interrogators stuffed Mr. al-Marri’s mouth with cloth and covered his mouth with heavy duct tape,” says the legal filings. “The [duct] tape caused Mr. al-Marri serious pain. One time, when Mr. al-Marri managed to loosen the tape with his mouth, interrogators re-taped his mouth even more tightly. Mr. al-Marri started to choke until a panicked agent from the FBI or Defense Intelligence Agency removed the tape.” [United Press International, 3/13/2008; Washington Post, 3/31/2008]

The Pentagon reviews a compendium of videotaped interrogations conducted at numerous US military detention facilities, including Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. It identifies at least 50 tapes, including one showing the forcible gagging of a suspect. Defense Department officials say that only a few of the tens of thousands of interrogations conducted since 2001 were recorded. Most were “routinely destroyed” if they were found to have no continuing value, according to Pentagon spokesman Don Black. Among the 50 or so tapes already identified are interrogations of two high-level “enemy combatants,” Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri and Jose Padilla. Both were interrogated at the Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina. A tape of an interrogation of al-Marri shows the terrorist suspect being gagged and manhandled by FBI agents (see March 13, 2008), but not waterboarded or otherwise tortured. Black says that the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, has reviewed the tape and is satisfied that al-Marri was treated in an acceptable fashion. As for other possible tapes, Admiral Mark H. Buzby, the military commander at Guantanamo, says, “We suspect that the recording devices contain recorded data but we are unable technologically to confirm whether data remains.” [New York Times, 3/13/2008]

Alleged al-Qaeda leader Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani is transferred to the US-run prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, and officially declared a “high value” prisoner. Rahim was captured in Lahore, Pakistan, by local forces in July 2007 (see July 2007) and then was held in a secret CIA prison until his transfer to Guantanamo (see Late July 2007-March 14, 2008). Why Is Rahim Considered Important? - Rahim is just the 16th person the US government has declared a “high value” prisoner. Fourteen prisoners were given that label when they were transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo in September 2006 (see September 6, 2006 and September 2-3, 2006). The 15th was Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who was held by the CIA in autumn 2006 and sent to Guantanamo in April 2007 (see Autumn 2006-Late April 2007). [Los Angeles Times, 3/15/2008] Although there had been reports in Pakistan about Rahim shortly after his arrest, virtually nothing was known about him until his transfer to Guantanamo. [Asian News International, 8/2/2007] He may have experienced extreme sleep deprivation during CIA interrogations (see August and November 2007). Hayden's Memo - There still are no published photographs of him. At the same time Rahim is sent to Guantanamo, CIA Director Michael Hayden issues a memo to CIA employees explaining Rahim’s alleged importance. Hayden calls Rahim a “tough, seasoned jihadist” with “high-level contacts,” and claims his arrest “was a blow to more than one terrorist network. He gave aid to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other anti-coalition militants.” According to Hayden, Rahim sought chemicals for an attack on US forces in Afghanistan and tried to recruit people who had access to US military facilities there. He helped prepare Tora Bora as a hideout in 2001, and then helped al-Qaeda operatives flee the area when US forces overran it in late 2001. But perhaps most importantly, Rahim had become one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted facilitators and translators in the years prior to Rahim’s arrest. [Los Angeles Times, 3/15/2008; New York Times, 3/15/2008]

Navy Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, the lawyer for Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan, says that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 presidential campaign. In a court brief filed on this day, Mizer describes a September 29, 2006 meeting at the Pentagon where Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England asked lawyers to consider 9/11-related prosecutions in light of the upcoming presidential campaign. “We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,” England is quoted as saying (see September 29, 2006). Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman refuses to discuss specifics of the case, but says that the Pentagon “has always been extraordinarily careful to guard against any unlawful command influence” in upcoming military commissions trials. Mizer says that because of England’s instructions, and other examples of alleged political interference, his client cannot get a fair trial. Three weeks before England’s observation about the “strategic political value” of the trials, President Bush disclosed that he had ordered the CIA to transfer “high-value detainees” from years of secret custody to Guantanamo for trial. Issues 'Scrambled' - Attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says the Hamdan motion exposes the problem of Pentagon appointees’ supervisory relationship to the war court. “It scrambles relationships that ought to be kept clear,” he says. England’s statement, says Fidell, is “enough that you’d want to hold an evidentiary hearing about it, with live witnesses. It does strike me as disturbing for there to be even a whiff of political considerations in what should be a quasi-judicial determination.” Susan Crawford is the White House-appointed supervisor for the court proceedings; England is a two-term White House appointee who has supervised the prison camps’ administrative processes. Crawford, England, and other White House officials have crossed the legal barriers that separate various functions of a military court, Mizer argues. Mizer plans to call the former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo trials, Morris Davis (see October 4, 2007), who first brought the England remark to light. Davis resigned his position after contending that political influence was interfering with the proper legal procedures surrounding the prosecution of accused war criminals. Motion for Dismissal - Mizer’s motion asks the judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, to dismiss the case against Hamdan as an alleged 9/11 co-conspirator on the grounds that Bush administration officials have exerted “unlawful command influence.” Hamdan is a former driver for Osama bin Laden whose lawyers successfully challenged an earlier war court format (see June 30, 2006). Hamdan’s case is on track to be the first full-scale US war crimes tribunal since World War II. [Miami Herald, 3/28/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) secures an 81-page memo from March 14, 2003 that gave Pentagon officials legal justification to ignore laws banning torture (see March 14, 2003). The Justice Department memo was written by John Yoo, then a top official at the Office of Legal Counsel, on behalf of then-Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes. It guides Pentagon lawyers on how to handle the legal issues surrounding “military interrogations of alien unlawful combatants held outside the United States.” According to Yoo’s rationale, if a US interrogator injured “an enemy combatant” in a way that might be illegal, “he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network.” That motive, Yoo opines, justifies extreme actions as national self-defense. While the existence of the memo has been known for some time, this is the first time the public has actually seen the document. This memo is similar to other Justice Department memos that define torture as treatment that “shock[s] the conscience” and risks organ failure or death for the victim. Legal scholars call the memo evidence of “the imperial presidency,” but Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says the memo is unremarkable, and is “far from inventing some novel interpretation of the Constitution.” The ACLU receives the document as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from itself, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations filed in June 2004 to obtain documents concerning the treatment of prisoners kept abroad. The Yoo memo is one of the documents requested. [John C. Yoo, 3/14/2003 ; United Press International, 4/2/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 4/2/2008] According to the ACLU, the memo not only allows military officials to ignore torture prohibitions, but allows the president, as commander in chief, to bypass both the Fourth and Fifth Amendments (see April 2, 2008). [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/2/2008] The Fourth Amendment grants the right for citizens “to be secure in their persons” and to have “probable cause” shown before they are subjected to “searches and seizures.” The Fifth Amendment mandates that citizens cannot be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” [Cornell University Law School, 8/19/2007] Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, says: “This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law. That it was issued by the Justice Department, whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/2/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), responding to a recently released Justice Department memo authorizing a wide array of torture techniques against detainees in US custody (see April 1, 2008), decries both the authorization of torture as an acceptable interrogation methodology and “the Bush administration’s extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power.” ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer adds: “The administration’s lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the US. They believe that the president should be above the law.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/2/2008]

John Yoo, the author of the just-released 2003 torture memo that advocated virtually unlimited presidential powers and asserted that US military can torture terrorist suspects (see March 14, 2003 and April 1, 2008), says that the memo is anything but extraordinary, and accuses his Justice Department successors of giving in to political pressures. Yoo is a former Justice Department official who now teaches law at the University of California at Berkeley. Yoo says the Justice Department altered its opinions “for appearances’ sake,” and his successors “ignored the Department’s long tradition in defending the president’s authority in wartime.” The memo did not “invent… some novel interpretation of the Constitution… our legal advice to the president, in fact, was near boilerplate.” [Washington Post, 4/2/2008] Yoo says that memos such as his sacrificed sensibility for exactitude, and asserts that he felt it necessary to be as detailed and specific as possible. “You have to draw the line. What the government is doing is unpleasant. It’s the use of violence. I don’t disagree with that. But I also think part of the job unfortunately of being a lawyer sometimes is you have to draw those lines. I think I could have written it in a much more—we could have written it in a much more palatable way, but it would have been vague.” [Washington Post, 4/6/2008] Others do not agree with Yoo’s defense (see April 2-4, 2008).

Legal experts and media observers react with shock and anger at former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s defense of his March 2003 torture defense (see April 2, 2008). Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale and American University, says: “This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency. It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.” [New York Times, 4/2/2008] Thomas J. Romig, the Army’s judge advocate general at the time the memo was issued, says that Yoo’s memo seems to argue that there are no rules in a time of war, an argument Romig finds “downright offensive.” [Washington Post, 4/2/2008] Retired Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the memo was written, says that he never saw the document authorizing harsh military interrogations and that its narrow definition of torture is “absolutely ludicrous.” Myers adds: “I frankly don’t know anyone in the military who bought into that as a good definition of when you cross the line. In the end, you want to do the right thing. I worry most about reciprocity, how other countries will treat us.” [Washington Post, 4/4/2008] Legal experts (see April 2-6, 2008) and media observers (see April 4, 2008) join in criticizing Yoo’s rationale for the torture memo.

Several legal experts join the retired military officials (see April 2-4, 2008) and media pundits (see April 4, 2008) who have spoken out against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s 2003 torture memo (see April 2, 2008). Dawn Johnsen, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration, says of Yoo’s memo: “Having 81 pages of legal analysis with its footnotes and respectable-sounding language makes the reader lose sight of what this is all about. He is saying that poking people’s eyes out and pouring acid on them is beyond Congress’s ability to limit a president. It is an unconscionable document.” [Washington Post, 4/6/2008] Former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Martin Lederman, now a law professor at Georgetown University, says the Yoo memo helped create a legal environment that allowed prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. “What else could have been the source of belief in Iraq that the gloves were off and all laws could be disregarded with impunity?” Lederman asks. “It created a world in which everyone on the ground believed the laws did not apply. It was a law-free zone.” [Washington Post, 4/2/2008] Doug Cassell, the director of Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights, says: “This newly disclosed memo confirms that John Yoo inflicted his legal theory, that the commander in chief can do anything in wartime, not only on the CIA, but on the Pentagon as well. Yet when the Justice Department revoked the Yoo memos, it expressly declined to address that theory. It is high time for the Justice Department to repudiate Yoo’s pernicious doctrine, once and for all.” [Institute for Public Accuracy, 4/2/2008]

The New York Times’s editorial board berates former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo for his defense of his 2003 advocacy of torture (see April 2, 2008), joining retired military officials (see April 2-4, 2008) and legal experts (see April 2-6, 2008). The board writes: “You can often tell if someone understands how wrong their actions are by the lengths to which they go to rationalize them. It took 81 pages of twisted legal reasoning to justify President Bush’s decision to ignore federal law and international treaties and authorize the abuse and torture of prisoners. Eighty-one spine-crawling pages in a memo that might have been unearthed from the dusty archives of some authoritarian regime and has no place in the annals of the United States. It is must reading for anyone who still doubts whether the abuse of prisoners were rogue acts rather than calculated policy.… The purpose of the March 14 memo was equally insidious: to make sure that the policy makers who authorized those acts, or the subordinates who carried out the orders, were not convicted of any crime.… Reading the full text, released this week, makes it startlingly clear how deeply the Bush administration corrupted the law and the role of lawyers to give cover to existing and plainly illegal policies.… When the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public, we were told these were the depraved actions of a few soldiers. The Yoo memo makes it chillingly apparent that senior officials authorized unspeakable acts and went to great lengths to shield themselves from prosecution.” [New York Times, 4/4/2008]

The Congressional Quarterly reports on a growing body of evidence that indicates US interrogators are using mind-altering drugs on prisoners suspected of terrorist ties. The evidence is not yet conclusive, but reporter Jeff Stein writes: “There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes.” Connection to Yoo Memo - The idea that the US might be using hallucinogenic or other drugs on detainees in Guantanamo and other US detention facilities was bolstered by the recent revelation of another “torture memo,” this one written in 2003 by then-Justice Department lawyer John Yoo (see March 14, 2003). Yoo wrote that US interrogators could use mind-altering drugs on terror suspects as long as the drugs did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” Yoo first rationalized the use of drugs on prisoners in earlier “torture memos” (see January 9, 2002 and August 1, 2002). Criticism - Stephen Miles, a bioethicist and author of a recent book detailing medical complicity in US torture of suspected terrorists, notes: “The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid. The recent memo on mood-altering drugs does not extend previous work on this area. The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by [Defense Department, Justice Department], and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.” Jeffrey Kaye, a clinical psychologist who works with torture victims through Survivors International, says plainly: “Yes, I believe [drugs] have been used. I came across some evidence that they were using mind-altering drugs, to regress the prisoners, to ascertain if they were using deception techniques, to break them down.” Varieties of Drugs and Placebos Being Used? - It is well known that US military personnel often use sedatives on shackled and hooded prisoners on “rendition” flights from Middle Eastern countries to Guantanamo. There is no hard evidence to support claims that US interrogators are using hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD on detainees. However, Michael Caruso, who represents suspected al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla (see May 8, 2002), filed a motion last year asserting that his client “was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.” Caruso had no proof to back up his claim. KUBARK - Stein notes that a 1963 CIA interrogation manual, code-named KUBARK, advocated the use of placebos as well as real drugs on prisoners. And Michael Gelles, a psychologist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Institute who has spoken out against the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo, says that he never saw anything related to drugs. “I never saw that raised as an issue,” he says. Hallucinogens such as LSD do not make subjects tell the truth. According to KUBARK, “Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation.” Winging It - In July 2003, the CIA, the RAND Corporation, and the American Psychological Association hosted a workshop that explored the question of using drugs to “affect apparent truth-telling behavior” (see June 17-18, 2003). After 9/11, top Bush administration officials pushed military commanders for quick intelligence but, according to a recent study, the interrogators unsure how to use harsher methodologies (see December 2006) and began “mak[ing] it up on the fly.” Guantanamo - Guantanamo staff judge advocate Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver says that some of the interrogators drew inspiration from the popular TV drama 24 (see Fall 2006). Beaver makes no mention of drugs being used, but Ewe Jacobs, the director of Survivors International, says she may not have seen or heard about their use. “The Guantanamo camps were isolated from one another,” he says. What happened in one part of the facility may not have been known in other areas. Miles adds, “I suspect that most of the use of interrogational drugs was by CIA and Special Ops interrogators, and thus still remains classified.” Credibility Issues - As with victims of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program from the 1960s and 70s, when unwitting subjects were dosed with hallucinogenic drugs and their reactions catalogued and observed, the detainees who may have been forcibly given such drugs will likely not be believed by many. Absent hard evidence, many will consider the detainees either “looney,” in Stein’s words, or liars. Few believe that Padilla was drugged. And, Stein concludes, “Even fewer will believe the other prisoners, a number of whom are deranged from prolonged interrogation—if they ever get out.” [Congressional Quarterly, 4/4/2008]

Attorneys for US soldiers charged with abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison say they will use the recently released Justice Department torture memo (see March 14, 2003 and April 1, 2008) to show that the highest levels of government condoned the harsh interrogations and brutality used against prisoners in US detention facilities. The government argues that the brutal treatment meted out to detainees in Abu Ghraib was performed by low-ranking soldiers without military or government authorization. The Justice Department has already dropped 22 of 24 cases of detainee abuse against civilian employees and contractors referred by the CIA and Defense Department, and a US official says the torture memo’s legal arguments—interrogators are exempt from criminal liability—may have been part of the reason why those cases were dropped. A law enforcement official involved in the decisions says: “Could it conceivably have played a role in deciding whether to prosecute or not? Certainly, in theory. If there was a memo blessing behavior at a certain point in time, and someone relied on legal guidance, could they have formed the necessary intent” to break the law? Lawyer Charles Gittins, representing Army Private Charles Graner Jr. in Graner’s appeal of his convictions stemming from his abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, says the memo seems to show that President Bush suspended maltreatment laws for the military during a time of war. Gittins will submit the document to Graner’s parole board when it meets in May. [Washington Post, 4/4/2008]

Author and former civil litigator Glenn Greenwald writes that he is angered, but not particularly shocked, at the US mainstream media’s failure to provide in-depth, extensive coverage of the recently released 2003 torture memo (see March 14, 2003 and April 1, 2008) and another memo asserting that the Bush administration had declared the Fourth Amendment null and void in reference to “domestic military operations” inside the US (see April 2, 2008). Greenwald also notes the lack of coverage of a recent puzzling comment by Attorney General Michael Mukasey about 9/11 (see March 27, 2008). Instead, Greenwald notes, stories about the Democratic presidential campaign (including criticism over Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s recent bowling scores) have dominated press coverage. According to a recent NEXIS search, these various topics have been mentioned in the media in the last thirty days: “Yoo and torture” (referring to John Yoo, the author of the two memos mentioned above)—102. “Mukasey and 9/11”—73. “Yoo and Fourth Amendment”—16. “Obama and bowling”—1,043. “Obama and Wright”—More than 3,000 (too many to be counted). “Obama and patriotism”—1,607. “Clinton and Lewinsky”—1,079. [Salon, 4/5/2008](For the record, on March 30, Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania during a campaign stop, in the company of Senator Bob Casey (D-PA). Newsmax is among the many media outlets that provided play-by-play coverage of Obama’s abysmal performance on the lanes—he scored a 37. The site reported that Obama lost “beautifully” and was “way out of his league.”) [NewsMax, 3/31/2008]Media Attacks Obama's 'Elitism' - The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz gives over much of his column to a discussion of Obama’s eating and bowling habits, making the argument, according to Greenwald, that Obama is “not a regular guy but an arrogant elitist.” Kurtz defends his argument by compiling a raft of “similar chatter about this from Karl Rove” and others. Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson spent a week’s worth of columns calling Obama’s bowling his biggest mistake, a “real doozy.” MSNBC reported that Obama went bowling “with disastrous consequences.” Greenwald notes that the media “as always,” takes “their personality-based fixations from the right, who have been promoting the Obama is an arrogant, exotic, elitist freak narrative for some time.” In this vein, Time’s Joe Klein wrote of what he called Obama’s “patriotism problem,” saying that “this is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right.” Greenwald notes, “He trotted it all out—the bowling, the lapel pin, Obama’s angry, America-hating wife, ‘his Islamic-sounding name.’” Greenwald calls the media fixation on Obama’s bowling and his apparent failure to be a “regular guy” another instance of their “self-referential narcissism—whatever they sputter about is what ‘the people’ care about, and therefore they must keep harping on it, because their chatter is proof of its importance. They don’t need Drudge to rule their world any longer because they are Matt Drudge now.” [Salon, 4/5/2008]

The press reports that, beginning in the spring of 2002, top Bush administration officials approved specific details about how terrorism suspects would be interrogated by the CIA. The officials issued their approval as part of their duties as the National Security Council’s Principals Committee (see April 2002 and After). [ABC News, 4/9/2008] The American Civil Liberties Union’s Caroline Fredrickson says: “With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House. This is what we suspected all along.” [Associated Press, 4/10/2008]

Law professor Jonathan Turley, discussing recent revelations that top White House officials regularly met to discuss and approve torture methods for terror suspects in US custody (see April 2002 and After and April 11, 2008), says: “What you have are a bunch of people talking about what is something that’s a crime. For those of us who look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is, this is like a meeting of the Bada Bing club. These people are sitting around regularly talking about something defined as a crime. Then you have [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft standing up and saying, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this at the White House. Well, obviously, that’s quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far. It was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved as the very highest level. And it goes right to the president’s desk. And it’s notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this, and they found those lawyers, people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo (see August 1, 2002). And those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee’s case, he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.” Asked if what the White House officials did could lead to war crimes prosecutions, Turley answers: “It’s always been a war crimes trial ready to happen. But Congress is like a convention of Claude Rains actors. Everyone’s saying, we’re shocked, shocked; there’s torture being discussed in the White House. But no one is doing anything about it. So what we have is the need for someone to get off the theater and move to the actual in going and trying to investigate these crimes.” [MSNBC, 4/10/2008]

John Conyers. [Source: Public domain / US Congress]Democrats in Congress lambast the Bush administration over recent disclosures that senior White House officials specifically approved the use of extreme interrogation measures against suspected terrorists (see April 2002 and After). Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) calls the news “yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture.… Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture? Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration’s renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights.” [Associated Press, 4/10/2008] John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, calls the actions “a stain on our democracy.” Conyers says his committee is considering subpoenaing members of the Principals, and perhaps the author of the torture memo, John Yoo (see August 1, 2002), to testify about the discussions and approvals. [Progressive, 4/14/2008]

President Bush admits he knew about his National Security Council Principals Committee’s discussion and approval of harsh interrogation methods against certain terror suspects (see April 2002 and After). Earlier reports had noted that the Principals—a group of top White House officials led by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—had deliberately kept Bush “out of the loop” in order for him to maintain “deniability.” Bush tells a reporter: “Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people. And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush says that the news of those meetings to consider extreme interrogation methods was not “startling.” He admitted as far back as 2006 that such techniques were being used by the CIA (see September 6, 2006). But only now does the news of such direct involvement by Bush’s top officials become public knowledge. The Principals approved the waterboarding of several terror suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see Shortly After February 29 or March 1, 2003 and March 10, 2007); Bush defends the use of such extreme measures against Mohammed, saying: “We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it. And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed knew.… I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack—I mean, the 9/11 attacks.” [ABC News, 4/11/2008] Bush’s admission is no surprise. The day before Bush makes his remarks, law professor Jonathan Turley said: “We really don’t have much of a question about the president’s role here. He’s never denied that he was fully informed of these measures. He, in fact, early on in his presidency—he seemed to brag that they were using harsh and tough methods. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was aware of this. The doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do anything about it.” [MSNBC, 4/10/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls for an independent counsel to investigate President Bush and his current and former top officials over their involvement in approving torture against terror suspects held captive by US military and intelligence personnel (see April 2002 and After and April 11, 2008). The ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, says: “We have always known that the CIA’s use of torture was approved from the very top levels of the US government, yet the latest revelations about knowledge from the president himself and authorization from his top advisers only confirms our worst fears. It is a very sad day when the president of the United States subverts the Constitution, the rule of law, and American values of justice.” The ACLU’s Caroline Frederickson adds: “No one in the executive branch of government can be trusted to fairly investigate or prosecute any crimes since the head of every relevant department, along with the president and vice president, either knew [of] or participated in the planning and approval of illegal acts. Congress cannot look the other way; it must demand an independent investigation and independent prosecutor.” Romero says the ACLU is offering legal assistance to any terrorism suspect being prosecuted by the US: “It is more important than ever that the US government, when seeking justice against those it suspects of harming us, adhere to our commitment to due process and the rule of law. That’s why the ACLU has taken the extraordinary step to offer our assistance to those being prosecuted under the unconstitutional military commissions process.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/12/2008]

Ruth Conniff. [Source: PBS]Columnist and veteran news commentator Ruth Conniff writes in the Progressive that she is disturbed both by the news that senior Bush officials signed off on the use of specific torture methods against al-Qaeda suspects in US custody (see April 2002 and After), and by the fact that the mainstream media, with notable exceptions, has virtually ignored the story. Between this story and the follow-up that President Bush himself knew of the discussions and approvals (see April 11, 2008), Conniff asks: “Why is this not bigger news? Remember when the nation was brought to a virtual standstill over Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern? We now have confirmation that the president of the United States gave the OK for his national security team to violate international law and plot the sordid details of torture. The Democrats in Congress should be raising the roof.” [Progressive, 4/14/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releases Defense Department documents that confirm the military’s use of illegal interrogation methods on detainees held in US custody in Afghanistan. The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, are from an Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) probe. The ACLU’s Amrit Singh says: “These documents make it clear that the military was using unlawful interrogation techniques in Afghanistan. Rather than putting a stop to these systemic abuses, senior officials appear to have turned a blind eye to them.” In the CID reports, Special Operations officers in Gardez, Afghanistan, admitted to using what are known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) techniques, which for decades American service members experienced as training to prepare for the brutal treatment they might face if captured (see December 2001, January 2002 and After, and July 2002). At least eight prisoners in custody at Gardez were beaten, burned, and doused with cold water before being placed into freezing weather conditions. One of the eight prisoners, Jamal Naseer, died in US custody (see March 16, 2003). Subsequent investigations ignored numerous witness statements describing torture; Naseer was eventually declared dead due to a “stomach ailment.” The documents also provide evidence showing that prisoners were sodomized. “These documents raise serious questions about the adequacy of the military’s investigations into prisoner abuse,” says Singh. [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/16/2008]

The Justice Department launches an investigation into whether its former officials acted properly in advising President Bush that his wartime authority trumped domestic law, United Nations treaties, and international bans on torture. The investigation hinges on a March 2003 memo written by then-Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo that approved of Bush officials’ intent to use torture (see March 14, 2003). Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says the investigation will “help us discover what went wrong and how to put it right.” Whitehouse continues, “The abject failure of legal scholarship in the Office of Legal Counsel’s analysis of torture suggests that what mattered was not that the reasoning was sound, or that the research was comprehensive, but that it delivered what the Bush administration wanted.” Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says that the investigation is part of an overall investigation that has been underway for years. [Associated Press, 4/17/2008]

The Washington Post reports that at least two dozen current and former detainees at Guantanamo Bay claim that they were given drugs against their will, or witnessed other inmates being drugged. These detainees believe that they were drugged in order to force confessions of terrorist ties from them (see 2002-2005). The CIA and the Defense Department deny using drugs in their interrogations, and suggest that such claims are either lies or mistaken interpretations of routine medical treatment. Claims Bolstered by Justice Department Memo - But the claims are bolstered by the recent revelation of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees (see March 14, 2003). The memo, written by then-Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, reversed a decades-old US ban on the use of “mind-altering substances” on prisoners. Instead, Yoo wrote, drugs could indeed be used as long as they did not inflict permanent or “profound” psychological damage. US law “does not preclude any and all use of drugs,” Yoo wrote. The claims are also given weight by a 2004 statement from the commander of a detention facility in Afghanistan, who alluded to the CIA drugging detainees (see February 2004). Drugging Detainees a Gross Violation of Anti-Torture Treaties - Legal experts and human rights groups are calling for a full accounting, including release of detailed prison medical records. They say that forcing drugs on detainees for non-medical reasons is a particularly serious violation of international treaties banning torture. Medical ethics expert Leonard Rubinstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, says: “The use of drugs as a form of restraint of prisoners is both unlawful and unethical. These allegations demand a full inquiry by Congress and the Department of Justice.” Scott Allen, the co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, says that there are no accepted medical standards for the use of drugs to interrogate or subjugate prisoners. Any such use “would have to be considered an experimental use of medicine.… The involvement of physicians and other health professionals in such a program would be a profound betrayal of medical trust and needs to be investigated further.” The Geneva Conventions do not specifically refer to drugs, but they ban any use of force or coercion in interrogating prisoners of war. Law professor Barbara Olshansky, the author of a book on military tribunals, says: “If you’re talking about interrogations, you’re talking about very specific prohibitions that mean you cannot use any force, at all, to interrogate someone. The law is beyond clear.” Team of Guards Present - When inmates were injected or forced to take pills, former detainees claim, the personnel administering the drugs were always accompanied by a squad of specially equipped guards known as the “Immediate Reaction Force” to handle any possible violent reactions from the drugged inmates. One former detainee who was later released without charge, Ruhel Ahmed, recalls that the guards wore padded gear and “forced us to have injections.” Ahmed recalls, “You are not allowed to refuse it and you don’t know what it is for.” He says he was given about a dozen injections, which “had the effect of making me feel very drowsy.” No Solid Evidence of Claims - No evidence of such drugging is known to the public, outside of detainee claims of effects from the injections that range from unnatural drowsiness to full-blown hallucinations. Former US intelligence officials have acknowledged giving sedatives to terror suspects before transporting them from one facility to another (see May 1, 2002). Former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora, who attempted without success to resist the Bush administration’s decision to use harsh interrogation tactics against detainees (see December 17-18, 2002), says he knows of no instances where detainees were drugged as part of their questioning. However, he adds, the detainees “knew they were being injected with something, and it is clear from all accounts that some suffered severe psychological damage.” Emi MacLean, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization which represents dozens of current and former detainees, says that many former detainees have clear and disturbing memories of being forcibly drugged. “Many speak about forced medication at Guantanamo without knowledge about what medication they were being forced to take,” MacLean says. “For some released [military] detainees, the forced medication they experienced was the most traumatic part” of their captivity. Other detainees have claimed, in interviews and statements provided by their lawyers, to have had injections and/or pills forcibly administered to them. One former detainee, French national Mourad Benchellali, says that during his three years at Guantanamo he was given treatments that were described to him as antibiotics or vitamins, yet they left him in what he describes as a mental fog. “These medicines gave us headaches, nausea, drowsiness,” Benchellali recalls. “But the effects were different for different detainees. Some fainted or threw up. Some had reactions such as pimples.” Other injections, often administered by force, left him and other detainees nauseated and light-headed, he says. “We were always tired and always felt groggy.” Detainee Moazzam Begg says that he believes he was given legitimate medications, but in improper dosages by poorly trained prison workers. Once, while being treated with pills for a panic attack, he began to hallucinate. “I saw things moving when they were not,” he recalls. “I talked to myself. I cried, laughed and sat immobile in a corner for hours. All of this was noted by the MPs and recorded.” Use of Hallucinogens on Recalcitrant Prisoners? - Benchellali says that a different type of injection was used on detainees who were particularly uncooperative. His recollections are echoed by statements from four other detainees. “The injection would make them crazy,” he recalls. “They would have a crisis or dementia—yelling, no longer sleeping, soiling themselves. Some of us suspected they were given LSD.” Center for Constitutional Rights attorney J. Wells Dixon says the government seems to have given drugs to detainees whose extended captivity made them distraught or rebellious. “Many of these men have become desperately suicidal,” Dixon says. “And the government’s response has been to administer more medication, often without the consent of the prisoners.” [Washington Post, 4/22/2008]

In recent letters to Congress, the Justice Department has suggested that the Geneva Conventions’ ban on “outrages against personal dignity” does not automatically apply to terrorism suspects in the custody of US intelligence agencies (see August 8, 2007 and March 6, 2008). The letters are just now being made public, with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) making them available to the Washington Post. Last year, Wyden asked the Justice Department to provide an explanation for President Bush’s 2007 executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using so-called “harsh interrogation techniques” on detainees (see July 20, 2007) even as Bush claimed US interrogators would always observe Geneva restrictions. The department responded with several letters that reasserted the Bush administration’s contentions that it is not bound by domestic law or international treaties in deciding how the Geneva Conventions apply to the interrogation of terror suspects. [Washington Post, 4/27/2008; Voice of America, 4/27/2008]'Humane Treatment' Subject to Interpretation, Circumstances - The Justice Department acknowledges that the US is bound by Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which requires that a signatory nation treat its detainees humanely; however, the letters say that the definition of “humane treatment” can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and can depend on the detainee’s identity and the importance of the information he possesses. In a letter written to a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the principal deputy assistant attorney general, Brian Benczkowski, wrote, “Some prohibitions… such as the prohibition on ‘outrages against personal dignity,’ do invite the consideration of the circumstances surrounding the action.” The government can weigh “the identity and information possessed by a detainee” in deciding whether to use harsh and potentially inhumane techniques, according to Benczkowski. A suspect with information about a future attack, for example, could and possibly would be subjected to extreme treatment, he says, and notes that a violation of the Geneva Conventions would only occur if the interrogator’s conduct “shocks the conscience” because it is out of proportion to “the government interest involved.” He continued, “The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act.” Furthermore, any action defined as an “outrage upon personal dignity” must be deliberate and involve an “intent to humiliate and degrade.” Government Arguments 'Appalling,' Says Senator - A spokeswoman for Wyden, Jennifer Hoelzer, says that the administration’s contention that the Geneva Conventions can be selectively applied is “stunning.” Hoelzer says: “The Geneva Convention in most cases is the only shield that Americans have when they are captured overseas. And for the president to say that it is acceptable to interpret Geneva on a sliding scale means that he thinks that it is acceptable for other countries to do the same. Senator Wyden—and I believe any other reasonable individual—finds that argument appalling.” Law professor Scott Silliman, who teaches national security law at Duke University, agrees with Wyden’s assessments. He notes, “What they are saying is that if my intent is to defend the United States rather than to humiliate you, than I have not committed an offense.” An anonymous Justice Department official disagrees. “I certainly don’t want to suggest that if there’s a good purpose you can head off and humiliate and degrade someone. The fact that you are doing something for a legitimate security purpose would be relevant, but there are things that a reasonable observer would deem to be outrageous.” However, he adds, “there are certainly things that can be insulting that would not raise to the level of an outrage on personal dignity.” Wyden states that if the US is subjective in deciding what is and isn’t compliant under Geneva, then other countries will do the same to US prisoners in their custody. “The cumulative effect in my interpretation is to put American troops at risk,” he says. [Washington Post, 4/27/2008; New York Times, 4/27/2008] He adds that the letters help make the case for a law that explicitly puts the CIA interrogations under the same restrictions as the military, or another set of clear standards. [Wall Street Journal, 4/27/2008]'Full Compliance' - The CIA refuses to comment on Benczkowski’s memo, but spokesman Mark Mansfield says the CIA’s detainee program “has been and continues to be in full compliance with the laws of our country.” He adds, “The program has disrupted terrorist plots and has saved lives.” [Washington Post, 4/27/2008; New York Times, 4/27/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that, according to newly released documents, the US military continued to use abusive and illegal interrogation methods on detainees well after an October 2003 directive meant to end such practices was issued. A number of Defense Department documents shows how military medical workers systematically failed to report abuses, and how psychologists took part in such interrogations—violations of both the law and medical oaths, the ACLU says. Documents Part of Church Report - The documents, part of what is known as the Church report (see May 11, 2004), have been newly unredacted in connection with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2004. The government has yet to release any details of interrogation methods used after the 2003 directive was issued. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh says the documents also show that “the use of some of the techniques… continued even until July 2004, despite the fact that many were retracted by the October 2003 memorandum, and some were subsequently prohibited by the May 2004 memorandum.” The report says, “The relatively widespread use of these techniques supports our finding that the policy documents were not always received or thoroughly understood.” The Church report, an internal review of prisoner interrogation policies conducted after the Abu Ghraib scandal, found that no military or civilian leaders either directed or encouraged the prisoner abuses committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. [Associated Press, 4/30/2008]Medics Failed to Report Abuse - According to the documents, Army medics failed to report abuses even after witnessing them. The Church report found that “enlisted medics witnessed obvious episodes of detainee abuse apparently without reporting them to superiors.” One medic watched as guards deliberately struck a detainee in his wounded leg. Two separate incidents involved detainees handcuffed in painful positions for extended periods of time; one of the detainees suffered a dislocated shoulder and the other experienced what the ACLU terms “excruciating pain when eventually forced to stand.” Another medic witnessed pictures of naked detainees in a pyramid but did not report the episode to superiors. “The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse—a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations,” says Singh. “The documents only underscore the need for an independent investigation into responsibility for the systemic abuse of detainees held in US custody abroad.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/30/2008]Partial Disclosure - Some of the report was disclosed in 2005, and parts of it have been declassified. Other portions remained classified in the interest of national security, according to government officials. Singh says these documents prove again that such classifications further a pattern “of claiming national security as pretext for withholding information to cover up embarrassing information.” The ACLU has long been critical of the Church report, calling it incomplete and sanitized. Lawsuits to force further disclosure are still pending. [Associated Press, 4/30/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 4/30/2008]

Mohammed Jawad, who has been detained at Guantanamo since age 16 (see December 17, 2002 and January 13, 2009), is beaten so badly by guards that weeks later he still has what Salon’s Glenn Greenwald will describe as “extreme bruises on his arms, knees, shoulders, forehead, and ribs.” [Salon, 1/21/2009]

Mohammed Jawad, a young Guantanamo detainee held in US captivity for almost six years (see December 17, 2002) and charged with attempted murder (see October 7, 2007), agrees to participate in his trial (see March 12, 2008), but authorizes his defense counsel, Major David Frakt, only to represent him for the purpose of challenging the legitimacy of the military commission system. Frakt tells the court that Jawad has been punished for his behavior at his arraignment (see March 12, 2008) by the loss of certain “comfort items,” including his only blanket. Frakt asks that the blanket and other items be returned to Jawad, asks for a mental health evaluation (see December 2003), and for changes in Jawad’s conditions of confinement. [Human Rights First, 9/2008] At some point in May, presumably after the hearing, Jawad will be severely beaten by his guards (see May 2008).

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releases Pentagon documents that include previously classified internal investigations into the abuse of detainees in US custody overseas. The documents provide new details about the deaths of detainees in Iraq, and internal dissent in the military over torture methods used at Guantanamo Bay. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh says: “These documents provide further evidence that the torture of prisoners in US custody abroad was not aberrational, but was widespread and systemic. They only underscore the need for an independent investigation into high-level responsibility for prisoner abuse.” The documents provide details of four investigations into prisoner deaths conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS): March 2003: Iraqi prisoner Hemdan El Gashame was shot to death in Nasiriyah (see March 2003); June 2003: A 53-year-old Iraqi man, Naem Sadoon Hatab, was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment camp in Nasiriyah (see June 2003); November 2003: Manadel al-Jamadi was beaten to death, apparently with a stove, at Abu Ghraib (see Between 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. November 4, 2003 and November 5, 2003); 2004: Iraqi prisoner Farhad Mohamed died in Mosul (see 2004); later examination found contusions under his eyes and the bottom of his chin, a swollen nose, and cuts and large bumps on his forehead. Another document shows that as far back as September 2002 Army officials were objecting to the methods used in interrogating Guantanamo prisoners (see September 2002). [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/14/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responds to a just-released Justice Department report about prisoner abuse at Guantanamo and in US-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan (see May 20, 2008). “Today’s OIG [Office of the Inspector General] report reveals that top government officials in the Defense Department, CIA, and even as high as the White House turned a blind eye to torture and abuse and failed to act aggressively to end it,” says ACLU executive director Anthony Romero. “Moreover, the country’s top law enforcement agency—the FBI—did not take measures to enforce the law but only belatedly reported on the law’s violations. It’s troubling that the government seems to have been more concerned with obscuring the facts than with enforcing the law and stopping the torture and abuse of detainees. Had the government taken action in 2002, perhaps the disgrace of Abu Ghraib and other abuses could have been avoided.” Senior ACLU official Caroline Fredrickson says: “Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently testified to Congress that he cannot prosecute anyone for anything approved by Justice Department opinions that authorized detainee abuse (see February 7, 2008). But no one gets immunity for acts they should have known were illegal. The filtering up of information from FBI agents to high government officials makes claims of immunity even more incredulous.” And ACLU senior legislative counsel Christopher Anders says: “This new report should become exhibit A at the next Congressional hearing on the Bush administration’s use of torture. The House Judiciary Committee is in the middle of the first thorough Congressional review of the development and implementation of the torture policies at the top levels of government. The questions are who did what and what crimes were committed. This Justice Department report helps answer both questions.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) releases a long-anticipated report on the alleged torture and abuse of terrorist suspects in US custody. The report was spurred by a Congressional request after Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests showed that FBI agents at Guantanamo had raised concerns about CIA- and military-conducted interrogations. The report identifies then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as a recipient of complaints of torture. [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008] The report, issued by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine, shows that CIA officials regularly ignored DOJ warnings that the interrogation tactics they were using amounted to “borderline torture.” The report also concludes that the Defense Department is ultimately responsible for how prisoners in military custody are being treated. As a result, the report finds no reason to bring criminal complaints against CIA officials or interrogators. 'Seven Months of Foot-Dragging' - The report documents what CBS News calls “seven months of foot-dragging” by the Pentagon, which attempted to water down the report. Failing that, the report cites numerous instances where Pentagon officials attempted to redact information in the report from public view. The report is lightly redacted. FBI Praised for Legal, Non-Coercive Interrogation Techniques - The report generally praises the FBI’s own interrogation efforts, methods, and results. It confirms that when CIA officials became impatient with what they were calling “throwaway results” by FBI interrogators, particularly in the case of Abu Zubaida (see April - June 2002), the CIA took over interrogations of prisoners such as Zubaida and began using harsh, torturous techniques. The FBI pulled its agents from the ongoing interrogations, refusing to participate in what it considered to be illegal actions (see May 13, 2004). (In 2009, a former FBI interrogator will confirm that the FBI gathered far more useful information from its non-coercive techniques than the CIA did with its “borderline torture” methods—see Late March through Early June, 2002 and April 22, 2009.) [CBS News, 5/20/2008; Newsweek, 5/20/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008]Witnesses to Torture - However, the report makes clear that FBI agents witnessed harsh interrogations that may have constituted torture at three locations—Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Force Base facility, and Guantanamo Bay. FBI agents are explicitly banned from using brutality, physical violence, intimidation, or other means of causing duress when interviewing suspects. Instead, the FBI generally tries to build a rapport with suspects to get information. “Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,” one FBI employee, senior FBI lawyer Spike Bowman, reported. Bowman worried that the FBI would be “tarred by the same brush,” when asked whether the FBI should refer the matter to the Defense Department Inspector General, and added, “Were I still on active duty, there is no question in my mind that it would be a duty to do so.” The report cites two FBI agents at Guantanamo who “had concerns not only about the proposed techniques but also about the glee with which the would-be [military] participants discussed their respective roles in carrying out these techniques, and the utter lack of sophistication and circus-like atmosphere within this interrogation strategy session.” [CBS News, 5/20/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008]Blocking Access to Zubaida - CIA general counsel John Rizzo refused to let DOJ investigators interview Zubaida for the report. The CIA has admitted that Zubaida was waterboarded (see Mid-May, 2002, March 2002 and April - June 2002). The report says that the CIA’s denial of access to Zubaida was “unwarranted,” and “hampered” the investigation, and contrasts the CIA’s actions with those of the Defense Department, which allowed DOJ investigators to interview Guantanamo prisoners. Rizzo told the DOJ that Zubaida “could make false allegations against CIA employees.” [Newsweek, 5/20/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008]Split over Al-Khatani - The rift between the CIA and FBI came to a head over the treatment of Mohamed al-Khatani, one of several suspected terrorists accused of being the fabled “20th hijacker” for the 9/11 attacks (see December 2001). According to the report, al-Khatani was abused in a number of ways by military interrogators at Guantanamo; the report cites the use of attack dogs, shackling and stress positions, sexual humiliation, mocking al-Khatani’s religion, and extended sleep deprivation among other tactics. FBI officials complained to the White House after learning that military interrogators forced him to “perform dog tricks,” “be nude in front of a female,” and wear “women’s underwear on his head.” Al-Khatani did eventually “confess” (see July 2002), but FBI officials expressed serious doubts as to the validity of his confession, both in its accuracy and in its admissability in a criminal court. The then-chief of the Guantanamo facility, Major General Geoffrey Miller, ordered a “relentless” and “sustained attack” on al-Khatani. “The plan was to keep him up until he broke,” an FBI agent told superiors, and some of those superiors worried that those techniques would render his confession inadmissible. Al-Khatani was hospitalized for hypothermia during those interrogations. His lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez, says her client recently attempted suicide because of his treatment. “The tactics that were used against and the impact, the pain and suffering it caused him and the damage that it caused him does rise to a level of torture,” she says. The government recently dropped all charges against al-Khatani (see October 26, 2006 and January 14, 2009), because if he had been brought to trial, all of the evidence of his treatment would be made public. [CBS News, 5/20/2008; Newsweek, 5/20/2008; American Civil Liberties Union, 5/20/2008]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releases several heavily redacted documents detailing the CIA’s use of waterboarding as well as a similarly redacted CIA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. The documents are obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. In addition, Judge Alvin Hellerstein has “preliminarily overruled” CIA assertions that other documents it is withholding are exempt from the lawsuit. ACLU senior official Jameel Jaffer says: “Even a cursory glance at these heavily redacted documents shows that the CIA is still withholding a great deal of information that should be released. This information is being withheld not for legitimate security reasons but rather to shield government officials who ought to be held accountable for their decisions to break the law.” OIG Report References Classified OLC Torture Memo - The OIG report contains references to an as-yet unreleased Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo from August 2002 authorizing an array of brutal interrogation methods (see August 1, 2002). (The OIG report calls the memo “unclassified.”) As-Yet Unreleased Documents - If Hellerstein follows through on his preliminary ruling, the CIA could be forced to disgorge three more documents: A September 17, 2001 CIA presidential directive setting up secret CIA detention centers abroad (see September 17, 2001); An August 2002 OLC memo authorizing the CIA to use particular interrogation methods (see August 1, 2002); CIA documents gathered by the CIA’s inspector general in the course of investigations into unlawful and improper conduct by CIA personnel. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh says: “We welcome the court’s preliminary ruling rejecting the CIA’s attempt to withhold records relating to its unlawful treatment of prisoners. If sustained, this ruling would be a historic victory that could compel the CIA to publicly disclose for the first time meaningful records relating to its use of torture.” [American Civil Liberties Union, 5/27/2008] The documents will be released two months later (see July 24, 2008).

The British human rights organization Reprieve claims that the US has detained around 26,000 terror suspects in its network of secret prisons. It also says that several prisoners were held on a network of secret prison ships, both for detention and for interrogation sessions that were held “off the books.” The prisoners allegedly included American-born John Walker Lindh (see December 2001-January 2002) and Australian David Hicks (see July 3, 2003). Reprieve says that the US has used ships stationed off the Somali coast and off the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to detain suspects (see June 2, 2008), including the USS Ashland, the USS Bataan, and the USS Peleliu; up to 17 naval vessels have been used, the group says. The Navy admits that its ships have sometimes housed prisoners for short periods of time, but denies that its vessels are used as long-term floating prisons. “We do not operate detention facilities on board Navy ships,” says Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. Reprieve bases its claims on evidence from the US military, the Council of Europe, and testimony from a former detainee at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [Associated Press, 6/2/2008]

Aerial photo of Diego Garcia island. [Source: Department of Defense]British Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all-party Parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, files a formal complaint with the government’s Information Commissioner over the government’s use of the island of Diego Garcia for the rendition of US prisoners to foreign countries for interrogation and possibly torture (see After February 7, 2002 and June 2, 2008). Diego Garcia is a large atoll in the Indian Ocean under British jurisdiction, and hosts a large British-American military base (see July 27, 1971-May 26, 1973). Tyrie says he decided to make the complaint to learn if Britain was in breach of its obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture (see October 21, 1994). The British government has recently admitted that at least two US rendition planes used Diego Garcia as a refueling base in 2002 (see December 2001-January 2002). “The foreign secretary has been forced to admit that two rendition planes refueled at Diego Garcia, despite explicit US assurances to the [British] government that no such flights had taken place,” Tyrie says. “Clearly people will conclude that these assurances are worthless.… But in response to requests by me the government has twice refused to release the terms of these assurances. Their disclosure will allow for a legal assessment of whether or not [Britain] has breached its obligations under the convention against torture, both with respect to Diego Garcia and to rendition generally.” Tyrie’s complaint requests that Foreign Secretary David Milbrand name the prisoners rendered through Diego Garcia by the US. Milbrand has already apologized to Parliament about falsely claiming that no US rendition flights have ever used Diego Garcia as a refueling base; other British government officials have issued similar denials (see January 8, 2003). But Manfred Novak, the UN special investigator on torture, says that he has credible evidence that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003. Human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith says he believes two of the detainees were Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni (see Early January-January 9, 2002 and March 2004) and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (see December 19, 2001 and January 2002 and After), though he cannot be sure since neither the US nor British governments are releasing the names of potential detainees kept at Diego Garcia. In 2007, a Council of Europe investigation into extraordinary rendition will learn that US agencies use Diego Garcia in the “processing” of “high-value detainees.” [Guardian, 6/2/2008; Guardian, 6/2/2008]

The USS Peleliu. [Source: Zack Baddor / AP]Human rights groups claim that the US is operating “floating prisons” as detention facilities for prisoners taken in the “war on terror.” The groups claim that the US is keeping prisoners aboard ships such as the USS Ashland, the USS Bataan, and the USS Peleliu (see December 27, 2001), and say that the Americans refuse to admit to the existence of such detainees. The human rights group Reprieve has asked that the US list the names and whereabouts of such “ghost detainees” held aboard US vessels. The existence of the detainees has come to light from a number of sources, including statements from US military officials, information provided by the Council of Europe and other parliamentary bodies, and prisoner testimonies (see June 2, 2008). Details of Detentions - Reprieve says the US has used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. While aboard, the prisoners are interrogated, then rendered to undisclosed locations. Fifteen of those ships may have operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia, which hosts a large British-American military base (see July 27, 1971-May 26, 1973 and After February 7, 2002). According to information obtained by Reprieve, in early 2007, the Ashland was involved in the detention and rendering of over 100 individuals abducted by Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian forces during an upsurge of fighting in Somalia, and then interrogated by FBI and CIA agents. Those individuals have now disappeared, but many are believed to be held in prisons in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantanamo Bay, among other possible sites. One prisoner released from Guantanamo has retold the account of a fellow inmate’s detention: “[H]e was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo.” Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s legal director, says the US military “choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.… By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001 (see November 17, 2005). The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.” British Officials Ask for Accountability - Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, says both the US and British governments must own up to their practices of rendition and “ghost detainees.” “Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition,” he says. “The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush’s departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism.” Tyrie has requested that an investigation into the use of Diego Garcia as a rendition refueling stop be undertaken (see June 2, 2008). Liberal Democrat MP Edward Davey adds: “If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly.” A US Naval spokesman says that none of its vessels have “detention facilities,” but admits that some detainees had been put on ships “for a few days” during their initial days of detention. He refuses to comment on reports that US Naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as “prison ships.” [Guardian, 6/2/2008]

Jan Schakowsky. [Source: Washington Post]Fifty-six Democratic members of the House of Representatives send a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether top Bush administration officials committed crimes in authorizing the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists (see April 2002 and After). The lawmakers, who include John Conyers (D-MI), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and House Intelligence Committee members Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), cite “mounting evidence” that senior officials personally sanctioned the use of such extreme interrogation methods. An independent investigation is needed to determine whether such actions violated US or international law, the letter states. “This information indicates that the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law,” the letter says. It adds that a broad inquiry is needed to examine the consequences of administration decisions at US detention sites in Iraq, at Guantanamo, and in secret prisons operated by the CIA. The interrogation methods have resulted in “abuse, sexual exploitation and torture” that may have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the American Anti-Torture Act of 2007. “Despite the seriousness of the evidence, the Justice Department has brought prosecution against only one civilian for an interrogation-related crime,” the letter reads. “Given that record, we believe it is necessary to appoint a special counsel in order to ensure that a thorough and impartial investigation occurs.” Conyers tells reporters after sending the letter, “We need an impartial criminal investigation.” The entire detainee controversy is “a truly shameful episode” in US history, he says. “Because these apparent ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were used under cover of Justice Department legal opinions, the need for an outside special prosecutor is obvious.” The Justice Department refuses to comment on the letter. Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch says that the letter is significant even if Mukasey refuses to appoint a special counsel. “The fact that so many representatives have called for the investigation helps lay the groundwork for the inevitable reckoning and accounting that the next administration is going to have to do regarding this administration’s practices,” she says. [US House of Representatives, 6/6/2008; Washington Post, 6/7/2008; United Press International, 6/7/2008]

A group of German civil rights lawyers files a lawsuit against the German government, demanding that the government attempt to extradite 13 CIA agents named in the alleged kidnapping of a German citizen. Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border (see December 31, 2003-January 23, 2004 and January 23 - March 2004). He was flown by the CIA to a detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and abused for months. El-Masri says he was released in Albania in May 2004, and told that he was the victim of mistaken identity (see May 29, 2004). No government or body has yet taken responsibility for el-Masri’s kidnapping and brutalization. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US officials have refused to address the case, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the US acknowledged making a mistake with el-Masri. Accountability - “We are demanding accountability” with the lawsuit, says attorney Wolfgang Kaleck. For himself, el-Masri says, “I just want the German government to acknowledge what happened to me.” An American judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by el-Masri against the CIA and three US corporations in 2006 (see May 18, 2006). In January 2007, German prosecutors issued warrants for the arrests of 13 CIA agents, accusing them of wrongfully imprisoning el-Masri and causing him serious bodily harm. The US Justice Department refused the requests, citing “American national interests,” and the German Ministry of Justice dropped the request. The lawsuit seeks to force the German government to reconsider extradition for the CIA agents. Extraordinary Rendition - According to human rights organizations, el-Masri’s case is an example of “extraordinary rendition,” where the US takes suspected terrorists to foreign countries where they are subjected to abuse and torture. A criminal lawsuit against CIA officers in conjunction with the el-Masri case is also ongoing in Macedonia; that case could end up before the European Court of Human Rights. And the American Civil Liberties Union has also filed a petition on el-Masri’s behalf through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a body that seeks to establish international laws. [Associated Press, 6/9/2008]

Physicians for Human Rights logo. [Source: Newsguide (.us)]Retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the probe into prisoner torture and abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison (see March 9, 2004), accuses the Bush administration of committing “war crimes,” and calls for Bush officials to be held accountable. Taguba’s remarks are part of a wide-ranging report on US torture by the human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The report, released today, finds that US personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, isolation, being hung from ceilings, and other practices. One prisoner was forced to drink urine. “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote in the report. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” PHR calls the report the most complete medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date. The report focuses on statements from, and medical examinations of, 11 detainees held for long periods of time in various US-run prisons and facilities before being released without charges. The report, titled “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” concurs with an investigation of Guantanamo conducted by investigative reporters for McClatchy News. PHR president Leonard Rubenstein says there was a direct connection between the Pentagon’s authorizations of extreme interrogation methods and the abuses his organization documented. “The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation, and… suffering,” he says. [Physicians for Human Rights, 6/2008; McClatchy News, 6/18/2008]

The lawyer for Mohammed Jawad, a young Guantanamo detainee held in US captivity for almost six years (see December 17, 2002) and charged with attempted murder (see October 7, 2007), attempts to have the charges against his client dismissed. Major David Frakt tells the court that Jawad has been subjected to a harsh regime of sleep deprivation nicknamed the “frequent flyer program.” Records show that Jawad was moved from one cell to another 112 times over the period of two weeks, with guards shackling, moving, and unshackling him for an average of once every two hours and 50 minutes. Frakt tells the court that Jawad had attempted suicide months before. The military commission judge refuses to dismiss the charges. [Human Rights First, 9/2008]

A poll shows that 53 percent of Americans believe torture should be unequivocally abolished, and 44 percent of Americans favor torture when dealing with terrorists. Thirteen percent say torture should be allowed in general. The poll was taken by WorldPublicOpinion.org, which is associated with the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes. US support for torturing terrorists has grown since 2006, when 36 percent favored the idea. Citizens in other countries were also polled about torture, and they generally show stronger opinions against torture. For instance, 82 percent in Britain, France, and Spain believe torture should be unequivocally abolished. [Deutsche Presse Agentur, 6/24/2008]

Newsweek reports that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the CIA’s destruction of video of the torture of al-Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is continuing, but proceeding slowly. Federal prosecutor John Durham has recently filed a federal court affidavit that states he is examining whether anyone “obstructed justice, made false statements, or acted in contempt of court or Congress in connection with the destruction of the videotapes.” He is specifically attempting to determine if the destruction violated any judge’s order. But progress is slow, and the investigation is likely to take six months or more, which means any criminal charges will probably come after the November 2008 presidential elections. Two sources close to former intelligence officials who are potential key witnesses in the case say these officials have not been summoned to give grand jury testimony. One of them has not even been questioned by the FBI yet. [Newsweek, 6/28/2008] Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Durham to head the investigation in January 2008 (see January 2, 2008).

Email Updates

Receive weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database

Donate

Developing and maintaining this site is very labor intensive. If you find it useful, please give us a hand and donate what you can.Donate Now

Volunteer

If you would like to help us with this effort, please contact us. We need help with programming (Java, JDO, mysql, and xml), design, networking, and publicity. If you want to contribute information to this site, click the register link at the top of the page, and start contributing.Contact Us